abyss
Pluralabysses
- 1A bottomless or unfathomed depth, such as a gulf or chasm; more broadly, any deep, immeasurable, or empty space.
From the bridge, hikers could see the deep abyss of the gorge dropping away beneath them.
The probe drifted on into the cold abyss beyond the outer planets.
UsageOften with the and into: fall or stare into the abyss.
Note
Here the abyss is a real drop: a chasm, a gorge, the emptiness of space. The word is frequently figurative, and the sense of the immeasurable and the moral sense borrow its picture of a fall with no floor.
- 2A catastrophe that is drawing near and about to happen.
Months of failed talks had brought the two nations to the edge of the abyss.
Investors feared the economy was sliding toward the abyss.
UsageUsually the edge of the abyss, the brink of the abyss, or sliding toward the abyss.
Similarcatastrophe, disaster, precipice
Note
The picture is a precipice with one step left, so it suits warnings about failing talks or a faltering economy, where there is still time to step back.
- 3Anything that is infinite, beyond measuring, or profound.
Geologists invite us to picture the abyss of time between the first living cells and ourselves.
The sermon urged the congregation to contemplate the abyss of eternity.
Similardepths
- 4Hell or the bottomless pit; also, the chaos of the world's beginning, or an enclosed ocean beneath the earth.
The preacher warned that unrepentant sinners would be cast into the abyss.
In the ancient myth, the god raised dry land from the waters of the abyss.
Similarhell, pit, underworld
Note
Tolkien keeps the old weight in The Return of the King (1955), where Gandalf orders the shadow back "to the abyss prepared for you".
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Tolkien wrote The Return of the King. en.wikipedia.org
- The Return of the King was first published in 1955. tolkienestate.com
- 5Deep moral corruption; also, vast depth of mind or of moral character.
Within a year the once-promising athlete had sunk into the abyss of gambling and fraud.
The novel takes readers deep into the abyss of a killer's mind.
UsageUsually the abyss of something: sink into the abyss of crime, an abyss of learning.
Similardepths
Note
Two opposite pulls share this sense, and the verbs around it tell them apart. The dark half is somewhere people fall or sink: the abyss of drug addiction, of gambling and fraud. The admiring half is something a mind contains, an abyss of learning, and nobody falls into it. After fall or sink, a reader expects ruin; after has or hides, depth.
- 6A difference between groups, especially a large one.
An abyss separates the generation that grew up online from the one that did not.
The reforms widened the abyss between the party's leaders and its voters.
Similargulf
- 7The abyssal zone, the deep layer of the open ocean studied in oceanography.
Sediment cores drilled from the abyss record millions of years of ocean history.
Few animals can survive the cold and crushing pressure of the ocean's abyss.
Similardepths
Note
Oceanography layers the open sea by depth, and this is one of the lowest layers: below the midnight zone, above the deep trenches, cold, completely dark and under enormous pressure. Scientists call it the abyssal zone, and call flat stretches of its floor abyssal plains; the bare abyss can also name this zone, as well as the general bottomless depth.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- Oceanography divides the ocean into zones by depth, with the abyssal zone below the midnight zone and above the hadal trenches. whoi.edu
- The abyssal zone is cold, dark and under enormous pressure; darkness here means absence of sunlight. noaa.gov
- Abyssal plains are the broad, flat areas of the deep seafloor; the zone's floor also includes other features. oceanexplorer.noaa.gov
- 'The abyss' also serves as a technical synonym for the abyssal zone. whoi.edu
Less common meaning
- 8The central point of an escutcheon, the shield in a coat of arms; also called the fess point.
Practice
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Origin
Ancient Greek ábussos ("bottomless") was formed from a- ("not") and bussós ("deep place"), which is related to buthós ("deep place"). It passed into Late Latin as abyssus ("a bottomless gulf") and into Middle English as abissus, taking the place of the native Old English neowolnes.