fight like hell

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

an idiom meaning to resist with absolute maximum effort and ferocity, using every available resource and refusing to yield regardless of the odds or the pain involved; the phrase employs the intensity of hell as a hyperbolic measure of the force brought to bear — to fight like hell is to fight with a desperate, uninhibited urgency that transcends normal limits of effort and endurance; in the context of illness and health challenges the phrase has become one of the most common expressions of the combative approach to disease — urging patients to resist their illness with the same wholehearted intensity they would bring to fighting for their lives; critics of the fight metaphor in illness discourse note that it can imply patients who do not recover failed to fight hard enough, but for many the phrase captures something genuine about the quality of determination required to endure gruelling treatment protocols and maintain the will to continue when the body and spirit are exhausted