An imp of hell; a rascal.
1857. We are going to dig a cache, or take some natural one, and put all the whining men and women into it, and let them whine. We want to be released from such poor hellyons, and we will be…. [We stood by Joseph Smith in 1833,] to keep the hellyons from him in Kirtland, twenty-four years ago.—H. C. Kimball at the Bowery, Salt Lake City, Aug. 2: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ v. 135–6.
1873. Hellions.—H. W. Beecher uses this word in one of his sermons, apparently in a sense equivalent to inhabitants of hell. On reading it I was reminded of a Welsh use of the word haliwns, a bad lot, in Llandyosal in Cardiganshire.—A Correspondent of Notes and Queries, 4 S. xii. 386.
*** This word was used as a term of abuse in Barnstable, Mass., about 1830: ‘Dialect Notes,’ i. 61 (1890). It is still occasionally heard. The compiler has met with it in Pennsylvania.
