CHASM

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does chasm mean? 

• CHASM (noun)
  The noun CHASM has 1 sense:

1. a deep opening in the earth's surface

  Familiarity information: CHASM used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CHASM (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A deep opening in the earth's surface

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Hypernyms ("chasm" is a kind of...):

gap; opening (an open or empty space in or between things)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "chasm"):

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

gulf (a deep wide chasm)

 Context examples 

No human ingenuity could suggest a means of bridging the chasm which yawned between ourselves and our past lives.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“Jump, Buck!” he commanded, sweeping his arm out and over the chasm.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

A huge rock, falling from above, boomed past me, struck the path, and bounded over into the chasm.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The sun sank lower in the heavens; we passed the river Drance and observed its path through the chasms of the higher and the glens of the lower hills.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I looked at the sky; it was pure: a kindly star twinkled just above the chasm ridge.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Their departure made another material change at Mansfield, a chasm which required some time to fill up.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

A few yards from the end the soil was all ploughed up into a patch of mud, and the branches and ferns which fringed the chasm were torn and bedraggled.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He was appalled at the awful intellectual chasm that yawned between him and his people.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Through this wild country it was that Sir Nigel and his Company pushed their way, riding at times through vast defiles where the brown, gnarled cliffs shot up on either side of them, and the sky was but a long winding blue slit between the clustering lines of box which fringed the lips of the precipices; or, again leading their horses along the narrow and rocky paths worn by the muleteers upon the edges of the chasm, where under their very elbows they could see the white streak which marked the gave which foamed a thousand feet below them.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)