abysmとは 意味・読み方・使い方

発音

• IPA: /əˈbɪzəm/
• 韻: -ɪzəm

名詞

abysm (plural abysms)

1. (archaic, poetic) Hell; the infernal pit; the great deep; the primal chaos. [from between 1150 and 1350]
   • 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 remarkable Neolithic discoveries”, in Smithsonian‎, volume 55, number 7: January/February:

     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 plough.”

2. (now chiefly literary) An abyss; a gulf, a chasm, a very deep hole. [from late 15th century]
   • 1623, Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, III, xiii:

     The abysm of hell.

   • 1946, Mervyn Peake, “The Grotto”, in Titus Groan, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode:

     Dr. Prunesquallor had circled around Steerpike with his head drawn back so that his cervical vertebrae rested against the near wall of his high collar, and a plumbless abysm yawned between his Adam’s apple and his pearl stud.

   • 2015 January 30, Glyn Maxwell, “‘Ideas of Order,’ by Neil L. Rudenstine [book review; print version: Eternal lines: A guide to Shakespeare's sonnets, International New York Times, 2 February 2015, p. 7]”, in The New York Times‎:

     [T]he Shakespearean sonnet doesn't lend itself to a sequential narrative, because the rhymed couplet, without its paired feet trembling at that abysm of time, has to settle instead for the sound of sighing resolution, at regular intervals, over and over, before taking a deep breath and returning usually, for better or worse, to the same subject.

別の表記

• abime, abyme

派生語

参照

• “abysm”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

アナグラム

• Byams