hell-bent for leather

Idioms and Phrases

Moving recklessly fast, as in Out the door she went, hell-bent for leather . The use of hell-bent in the sense of “recklessly determined” dates from the first half of the 1800s. Leather alludes to a horse's saddle and to riding on horseback; this colloquial expression may be an American version of the earlier British army jargon hell for leather , first recorded in 1889.

Example Sentences

A second later he had hoisted her to his saddle-bow and was spurring hell-bent-for-leather for the open country.

From Project Gutenberg

But there are little meteors—very tiny ones—that come in, hell-bent-for-leather, at a shade less than the velocity of light.

From Project Gutenberg