Abysm

Quick meaning: Abysm is a noun meaning (now chiefly literary) An abyss; a gulf, a chasm, a very deep hole.

Meaning

(now chiefly literary) An abyss; a gulf, a chasm, a very deep hole.

More Meanings

1. (archaic, poetic) Hell; the infernal pit; the great deep; the primal chaos.

Example Sentences

The abysm of hell.

Dr. Prunesquallor had circled around Steerpike with his head drawn back so that his cervical vertebrae rested against the near wall of his high collar, and a plumbless abysm yawned between his Adam’s apple and his pearl stud.

Orkney is an archipelago of 70 or so islands lying off the northeast tip of Scotland. “Everywhere in Orkney there is the sense of age, the dark backward and abysm,” the late Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown wrote. “The islands have been inhabited for a very long time, from before the day of the plough.”

[T]he Shakespearean sonnet doesn't lend itself to a sequential narrative, because the rhymed couplet, without its paired feet trembling at that abysm of time, has to settle instead for the sound of sighing resolution, at regular intervals, over and over, before taking a deep breath and returning usually, for better or worse, to the same subject.

Word Forms

• abysms
• abyme

Synonyms for abysm

Depending on context, synonyms include abyss.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include abyss, abyme, abime, profound, swallow, chaos.

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