abyme

Noun

abysm (plural abysms)

1. (archaic, poetic) Hell; the infernal pit; the great deep; the primal chaos.
   • 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...2025, Peter Ross, “Discover the Astounding Secrets of Scotland’s Stone Age Settlements. In the Orkney Islands, archaeologists close the chapter on a legendary excavation, capping two decades of...
2. (literary) An abyss; a gulf, a chasm, a very deep hole.
   • The abysm of hell.1623, Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, III, xiii