MEANING
1. A space or gulf that seems too deep or vast to measure or cross.
2. A condition of extreme despair, danger, or moral degradation, imagined as a deep pit.
3. A bottomless depth or original chaos described in religious or mythic accounts of the world’s beginnings.
Use it for
describing a depth whose bottom cannot be seen; showing a seemingly unbridgeable separation; portraying human smallness before an immense space; contrasting a visible edge with an unknowable depthNames a depth or gulf that defeats ordinary measurement, with clear distinctions between space, emotional peril, and creation imagery. Writing functions: Cosmic Horror fallback.
Words that belong together
- a yawning abyss
- gaze into the abyss
- an abyss between two worlds
On the page
Beyond the broken rail, the lamps revealed only the edge of an abyss.
An abyss separated their accounts of the same afternoon.
She feared that another question would push him into an abyss of despair.
The investigation opened an abyss of corruption beneath the institution’s calm surface.
The manuscript placed the first voice above an abyss with neither shore nor sky.
Related words
Word forms
- Base
- abyss
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Usage notes
Countable noun: abyss, abysses; often singular in literary uses. Abysm is an uncommon alternative form, not another entry. The abyss frequently needs context to distinguish physical depth from figurative or religious meanings. Register: literary. Commonness: moderately common (dictionary-informed qualitative editorial estimate; not a measured frequency).
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