all hell breaks/is let loose

all hell breaks loose

slang Said of a chaotic or disruptive situation, especially one that begins suddenly or unexpectedly. I'm just walking down the street when all hell breaks loose, and drivers start beeping and screaming at each other for no apparent reason. One guy pushed another at the bar and then all hell broke loose—that's why we left!See also: all, break, hell, loose

all hell breaks loose

or

all hell breaks out

INFORMALCOMMON If all hell breaks loose or all hell breaks out, a situation becomes uncontrolled and noisy, often with a lot of arguing or fighting. Suddenly, all hell broke loose upstairs. It sounded as if someone was battering at the door with a tree trunk. Toby came home and all hell broke loose. I had no idea that a baby could scream so much. Note: This expression first appeared in John Milton's `Paradise Lost' (1667), book 4, line 917, when the Archangel Gabriel addresses Satan: `Wherefore with thee Came not all hell broke loose?' (ie why did all hell not break loose and come with you?). Here, `broke' means `broken', but the meaning of this expression has since changed. See also: all, break, hell, loose

all ˈhell breaks/is let loose

(informal) there is suddenly an angry, noisy reaction to something; suddenly everything becomes confused, noisy, etc: When soldiers fired shots into the crowd, all hell broke loose. ♢ All hell broke loose when they heard that their pay had been cut.See also: all, break, hell, let, loose

all hell breaks loose

Chaos prevails. The expression crops up often in Elizabethan poetry (Robert Greene, Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare) and continued to be used by an amazing number of fine poets (Milton, Dryden, Swift, and Browning, among others).See also: all, break, hell, loose