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Hella is an American English slang term originating in and often associated with San Francisco's East Bay area in Northern California, possibly specifically emerging in the 1970s African-American vernacular of Oakland. It is used as an intensifying adverb such as in "hella bad" or "hella good". It was eventually added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2002, citing a 1987 first use in the Toronto Star. It is possibly a contraction of the phrase "hell of a" or "hell of a lot [of]", in turn reduced to "hell of", though some scholars doubt this etymology since its grammatical usage does not align with those phrases; or of "hellacious". It often appears in place of the words "really", "a lot", "totally", "very", and in some cases, "yes". Whereas hell of a is generally used with a noun, according to linguist Pamela Munro, hella is primarily used to modify an adjective such as "good".