means A large, fierce, destructive fire — or by extension any scene of overwhelming heat and chaos.

from From the Italian inferno, 'hell,' which descends from Late Latin infernus, 'the lower regions, the underworld,' itself from Latin inferus, 'below.' The word's modern fire-and-brimstone weight owes much to Dante, whose Inferno mapped Hell circle by circle in the early 1300s; English borrowed the term and gradually let it slide from the literal underworld to any blaze hot enough to feel like it.