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Previous examination of “A hell of a …” on this site focussed on emphasis, interjection or expletive usage. As examples we have:

(What is the meaning of "a hell of a lot"?)
a great deal or high degree of something

Is "hell of a" positive or negative? "a hell of"
just emphasises the strength of something

Why use "Hell" to emphasize a statement?
an interjection is most likely short for bloody hell.

I suggest that this story is at least incomplete, or sometimes erroneous, because of a mis-association of words meaning “whole” with the word “Hell” (as opposed to Heaven).

Dictionary of the Scots Language
Juist till I'm restit. Juist till I can move again. Then I'll mak my way to Invercloy and bide wi Uncle Jock till I'm haill again.

Here, “haill” is used in the sense of “whole”, similar to German “heil” or English “hale” (cf “hale and hearty”). We see the same in Willian Dunbar’s (c 1600) poem

Poets
“I that in heill was and gladness
Am trublit now with great sickness...”

Moving on:

Dictionary of the Scots Language
Ah'm corrupted, Ah'm polluted, ma hale life is a mess

Dictionary of the Scots Language I wroch and wrestle wi the hail stramash

In both these examples hail or hale mean whole or complete.

The origin presumably lies northwards (Norwegian hel, Swedish hela, Old Norse heill, all meaning whole). It is therefore no surprise that in “This Farming Life”, a British TV programme describing contemporary farm life, I heard an Orkney sheep farmer referring in 2022 to the “haill of the load” of animals or material. Further south this would be “hell of the load” and would likely be erroneously interpreted in the expletive or interjectional sense. It is interesting that this emphatic interpretation lives on partly in dictionary definitions that refer to a lot or many rather than the whole. Here is Collins:

Collins

If you talk about a hell of a lot of something, or one hell of a lot of something, you mean that there is a large amount of it.

Thus, for two examples, “A hell of mess” is a complete and whole mess, “A hell of a problem” is a complete and whole problem. The expletive or interjectional interpretations are not necessarily the whole story.

It took me a hell of a lot of writing to try to persuade you to consider my question.

Anton
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    There's a hell of a lot of writing, but what's the actual question? Are you asking if "hell" is actually an expletive in this sense or is it derived from the word "whole"? – Barmar Apr 14 '22 at 23:30
  • @barmar The title is the question. The introduction is necessarily long so as to counteract any tendency of readers to assume this is a duplicate of previous questions. – Anton Apr 15 '22 at 06:54
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    It seems too vague a question to fit here. Especially as you say you're not asking if it means "a whole of a...", which is an answerable question. So what are you asking? Do you just want any trivia we happen to know? Is there something you want to know but don't want to ask (maybe because it seems stupid or rude)? BTW, it's clearly not just an interjection or expletive as it can function as part of a normal sentence, but the first question you link explains its grammatical function as an intensifier. – Stuart F Apr 15 '22 at 12:44
  • @StuartF the question asks concisely if “there is more to … than …?” If the answer is no, then the reasons I give are refutable. If the answer is yes, then the reasons I give may be sound and complete or they may be sound but incomplete. In either case of yes or no, reasoned answer is both possible and welcome – Anton Apr 15 '22 at 13:26
  • It looks like the body of your question answers the title of your question. Prima facie, you've already shown that there's "more". +1 for the interesting trail. – Lawrence Apr 15 '22 at 16:24
  • Hell is used in many idioms (like the hell, though it's not so high-powered a swear word as it was when I was young). The full idiom you ask about is the intensifier a hell of a, often spelled in eye dialect as helluva. It's intended to intensify the sense and the emotion of whatever follows. The full phrase can be substituted for just about any indefinite article in a noun phrase. – John Lawler Apr 15 '22 at 20:23
  • @JohnLawler Indeed yes, but I suggest in the question that the other derivation (from whole) has become conflated and confused with the intensifier: that conflation is the nub of the question. – Anton Apr 21 '22 at 21:55
  • Umlaut and unrounding are well-known processes in English. And German. – John Lawler Apr 26 '22 at 18:29

1 Answers1

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whole and hell are not etymologically related, and mishearing dialect words for "whole" or related "hale" as "hell" is not the explanation for the expletive.

The expletive is a hell of a ____ and in your dialect examples it is "heill [entirety] of the load ".

OP writes:

I heard an Orkney sheep farmer referring in 2022 to the “haill of the load” of animals or material. Further south this would be “hell of the load” and would likely be erroneously interpreted in the expletive or interjectional sense.

No. Further south it would not be interpreted as an expletive, not if they heard it clearly. The sheep farmer probably said "the haill of the load" which does not follow the syntactic pattern of the expletive, which uses the indefinite article.

Finally, a number of expletive nouns could be substituted for hell.

It was a ________ of an exam.

TimR
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