inferno [M19th] In the early 14th century the Italian poet Dante Alighieri wrote The Divine Comedy, describing his journey through hell and purgatory and finally to paradise. The description of hell in particular, the ‘Inferno’, had a lasting impact on the European imagination. The word came to mean ‘hell’ and then ‘any fire raging out of control’. Italian inferno comes from Latin infernus ‘below, subterranean’, which is also the source of infernal [LME], and is related to inferior [LME].