living hell
An extremely unpleasant situation. She described her marriage to her alcoholic husband as a living hell. So many bad things happened to me that year that it was a living hell.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.
a living hell
COMMON If a situation or a place is a living hell, it is extremely unpleasant. School is a living hell for some children. Their marriage had become a living hell.
Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2012
living hell, a
A condition or place of acute misery and distress. This expression uses hell in the sense of the afterworld’s place of eternal torment. “Even after the divorce was final, he made her life a living hell.” Also put as hell on earth, it appears in such contexts as “Jungle warfare is a true hell on earth.”
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer Copyright © 2013 by Christine Ammer