ABYSMAL

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does abysmal mean? 

• ABYSMAL (adjective)
  The adjective ABYSMAL has 2 senses:

1. very great; limitless

2. resembling an abyss in depth; so deep as to be unmeasurable

  Familiarity information: ABYSMAL used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ABYSMAL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Very great; limitless

Context example:

abysmal stupidity

Similar:

immeasurable; immensurable; unmeasurable (impossible to measure)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Resembling an abyss in depth; so deep as to be unmeasurable

Synonyms:

abysmal; abyssal; unfathomable

Context example:

the abyssal depths of the ocean

Similar:

deep (having great spatial extension or penetration downward or inward from an outer surface or backward or laterally or outward from a center; sometimes used in combination)

Derivation:

abysm (a bottomless gulf or pit; any unfathomable (or apparently unfathomable) cavity or chasm or void extending below (often used figuratively))

 Context examples 

In the meantime, the abysmal brute in Beauty Smith had been rising into his brain and mastering the small bit of sanity that he possessed at best.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

You licked Cheese-Face because you wouldn't give in, and you wouldn't give in partly because you were an abysmal brute and for the rest because you believed what every one about you believed, that the measure of manhood was the carnivorous ferocity displayed in injuring and marring fellow-creatures' anatomies.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Somewhere a boot thumped loudly and at irregular intervals against the wall; and, though it was a mild night on the sea, there was a continual chorus of the creaking timbers and bulkheads and of abysmal noises beneath the flooring.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

To see moral grandeur rising out of cesspools of iniquity; to rise himself and first glimpse beauty, faint and far, through mud-dripping eyes; to see out of weakness, and frailty, and viciousness, and all abysmal brutishness, arising strength, and truth, and high spiritual endowment—

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)