a. [f. ABYSM sb. + -AL 1.] Of, pertaining to, or resembling an abyss; fathomless; deep-sunken. lit. and fig.

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[1656.  Blount, Glossogr.

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1721.  Bailey. Not in Johnson.]

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1817.  Coleridge, Biogr. Lit., 83. ‘Only fourpence,’ (O! how I felt the anti-climax, the abysmal bathos of that fourpence)!

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1850.  Mrs. Browning, Poems, I. 7. Countless angel-faces, still and stern, Pressed out upon me from the level heavens, Adown the abysmal spaces.

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1865.  Sat. Rev., 4 Feb., 146/1. Madame had carious teeth, abysmal eyes, and a wide wet grin.

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1879.  Farrar, St. Paul, II. 546. The government of Nero … at this moment presented a spectacle of awful cruelty and abysmal degradation.

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1892.  W. E. Henley, Song of the Sword, etc., 28.

                        The dragons of old time
Crunching and groping in the abysmal slime.

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1922.  Edith Wharton, Glimpses of the Moon, xix. 224. She abandoned herself to the feeling, forgetting the abysmal interval of his caress.

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