hellscape

noun

hell·​scape ˈhel-ˌskāp 

plural hellscapes

: a hellish landscape : a harshly unpleasant place or environment

I blame growing up in Southern California—this did not prepare me for real winter, much less the frigid hellscape that is New York in January.

—Aliza Arbabanel

Meanwhile, it's heartbreaking to see Route 33, once called out by Jalopnik as "America's greatest driving road," reduced to this horrifying hellscape. And, of course, to think about all the nearby people and animals and communities being inundated with fire and smoke.

—Andrew P. Collins

Examples of hellscape in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Could robots finally save us from the hellscape of hold music and scripted responses? —Craig S. Smith, Forbes, 16 Dec. 2024

A lot of this movie is actually a realistic, scathing indictment of our capitalist hellscape and how it’s made the buying process suck for just about everything — from concert tickets to designer purses. —Laura Bradley, Vulture, 5 Dec. 2024

For the Republican, the U.S. is a hellscape of rising crime, unchecked immigration and economic misery. —Brian Bennett, TIME, 11 Sep. 2024

The irony of allowing men who assault and rape women to determine that women also must carry pregnancies to term is a dystopian hellscape that is happening right now in the United States. —Krista Vernoff, Vogue, 2 Nov. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1894, in the meaning defined above