de profundis
de profundis adverb: from deep feelings of misery or despair. Also the alternative form of De Profundis.
Adverb
de profundis (not comparable)
- From deep feelings of misery or despair.
- Carts go along the streets; full of stript human corpses, thrown pell-mell; limbs sticking up: --seest thou that cold Hand sticking up, through the heaped embrace of brother corpses, in its yellow paleness, in its cold rigor; the palm opened towards Heaven, as if in dumb prayer, in expostulation de...1838, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: a History - Volume 2, page 198
- God can only be known de profundis.1934, Emil Brunner, The Mediator: A Study of the Central Doctrine of the Christian Faith, →ISBN
Proper noun (1) capitalized: De Profundis
De Profundis
- The 130th psalm, one of the seven penitential psalms of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches.
- The De Profundis is therefore a cry of hope, a prayer of love coming forth from the Sacred Heart to be re-echoed by our own; and whilst hoping for ourselves, we must hope also for our suffering brethren in purgatory, and we have confidence that if we pray with our whole hearts, our merciful Lord...1881, Louis Gaston A. de Ségur, Familiar instructions and evening lectures on all the truths of religion, page 102
- But the De profundis has only eight verses and so it is not surprising that all of it should have been adapted.1968, Patrick Gallagher, The Life and Works of Garci Sánchez de Badajoz, →ISBN, page 180
- A letter to Lord Alfred Douglas written by Oscar Wilde while he was imprisoned for gross indecency (homosexual acts). The title is a reference to the 130th psalm.
- Some years later, in his Autobiography, Douglas gave a significantly different version of events: My own evidence on this point is obscured by the fact that, as I did not know of the existence of the De Profundis MS.2000, Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, →ISBN
- Max Beerbohm, in a remarkably insightful review in Vanity Fair, specifically took on the "De Profundis is radically different" reading of Wilde: "Some of the critics, wishing to reconcile present enthusiasm with past indifference. . . have been suggesting that De Profundis is quite unlike any...2004, F. Roden, Palgrave Advances in Oscar Wilde Studies, →ISBN, page 176
- The name of various other works of art inspired by the feelings expressed in the 130th psalm. (see De Profundis)
Proper noun (2) capitalized: De profundis
De profundis
- Alternative form of De Profundis.
- They further engage, that the charity-boys of the priory, shall, every night forever, sing at the said chapel in the honour of the blessed Virgin Mary, the anthem Salve Regina, or Ave Regina, and after it say the psalm De profundis, with the prayer Fidelium, or Inclina, for the souls of the father...1780, The Winchester Guide, page 50
- Of particular interest is the fact that after Vespers the De profundis devotion was to follow immediately the performance of three polyphonic votive antiphons.1992, Alan Brown, Richard Turbet, Byrd Studies, →ISBN, page 30
Also used as
de profundis is also the alternative form of De Profundis.
Forms of de profundis
| alternative form | De profundis |
|---|---|
| alternative form | de profundis |
Origin of de profundis
Borrowed from Latin de profundis (“from the depths”), first words of Psalm 130.
From Middle English De Profundis, De profundis, deprofundis, deprovundis, from Latin dē profundīs (“out of the depths”), the first two words of the Latin version of the 130th Psalm.
From the Latin introit of the psalm.
Questions about de profundis
- What does de profundis mean?
- De profundis means from deep feelings of misery or despair.
- What part of speech is de profundis?
- De profundis can be an adverb or a proper noun.
Words near de profundis in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: de profundis (page history and authors); De Profundis (page history and authors); De profundis (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “de profundis.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/de_profundis. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.