Hell to Pay

Hell to Pay

The saying “There will be hell to pay” means “there will be serious trouble.” This is often used with if or when clauses. (e.g. There will be hell to pay, if you come home after curfew.) The “hell” part is sometimes replaced by “the devil,” and the meaning is almost identical. (“The devil to pay”)

Well, I really don’t need to explain this idiom, because the word “pay” alone already has the meaning of “to suffer a loss or other misfortune as a consequence of an action”.

“Hell to pay” sounds a bit strange to me, so I would like to consider the word “pay” in a broader sense here. As a matter of fact, the word “pay” originally comes from the Latin word “pācāre” which means “paficy or settle.” Now, since hell is basically the name of a place, it makes more sense to interpret it as “hell to pacify.”