Hella: a lot, many, much.Used in a sentence: Steph Curry ate hella burritos before going to Lake Tahoe.It's fitting that we start this off with the ultimate Bay Area slang word, hella, which originally spread to SoCal, and then other cities in the Western U.S. Since Gwen Stefani's 2001 pop hit &quot;Hella Good,&quot; it's spread to the rest of the country.Linguists believe that &quot;hella&quot; has its origins in the Hayward area in the mid-1970s. Hella gained popularity in the early 1990s, when it became a mainstay of the hip hop vernacular. In 2016, Merriam-Webster added the word to its dictionary. And the second season of the popular HBO series &quot;Insecure,&quot; which is based in Los Angeles, is using hella as part of the title in each of its episodes. Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle