Abysm
noun ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Hell; the infernal pit; the great deep; the primal chaos. archaic, poetic
"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.”"
- 2 a bottomless gulf or pit; any unfathomable (or apparently unfathomable) cavity or chasm or void extending below (often used figuratively) wordnet
- 3 An abyss; a gulf, a chasm, a very deep hole. literary
"The abysm of hell."
Example
More examples"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.”"
Etymology
From Middle English abime, from Old French abisme from Late Latin *abyssimus, a superlative of abyssus (“bottomless pit”), from Ancient Greek ἄβυσσος (ábussos). Cognate to French abîme. See also abyss.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.