# abyss

Pronunciation: say "uh-BIS" /əˈbɪs/

## Noun

1. A bottomless or unfathomed depth, such as a gulf or chasm; more broadly, any deep, immeasurable, or empty space.
   - Simple: A hole or drop so deep that it seems to have no bottom, or any huge 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._
2. A catastrophe that is drawing near and about to happen.
   - Simple: A very bad disaster that is 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._
3. Anything that is infinite, beyond measuring, or profound.
   - Simple: Something with no end, too big to measure, or very deep.
   - _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._
4. Hell or the bottomless pit; also, the chaos of the world's beginning, or an enclosed ocean beneath the earth.
   - Simple: Hell or a pit with no bottom, the disorder before the world began, or a sea under 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._
5. Deep moral corruption; also, vast depth of mind or of moral character.
   - Simple: Very deep evil, or a very great depth of thought or moral feeling.
   - _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._
6. A difference between groups, especially a large one.
   - Simple: A difference between groups, often a very big 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._
7. The abyssal zone, the deep layer of the open ocean studied in oceanography.
   - Simple: The very deep part of the ocean, far below the surface.
   - _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._

## Other meanings

- (noun) The central point of an escutcheon, the shield in a coat of arms; also called the fess point.

## 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.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/abyss (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).