[f. the adj.]
1. A vast or immense space. Chiefly poet., and freq. with adjs.
1604. E. G[rimstone], D’Acosta’s Hist. Indies, I. 5. That great Chaos, and infinite Vast, which the ancient Philosophers affirmed to bee vnder the earth.
1608. Shaks., Per., III. i. 1. Thou god of this great vast, rebuke these surges.
1709–11. Ken, Anodynes, Poet. Wks. 1721, III. 442. I then would higher soar, and cast My eyes o’re the Ethereal Vast.
1725. Pope, Odyss., IV. 683. By Juno’s guardian aid, the wat’ry Vast Secure of storms, your Royal brother past.
1794. W. Taylor, in Robberds, Mem. (1843), I. 150. Our souls the bands of death shall tear, Through the whole starry vast to range.
1818. Keats, Endym., III. 859. Far as the mariner on highest mast Can see all round upon the calmed vast.
1850. Tennyson, In Mem., Concl. xxxi. A soul shall draw from out the vast And strike his being into bounds.
1898. T. Hardy, Wessex Poems, 72. And up from the vast a murmuring passed As from a wood of pines.
b. Const. of (heaven, sea, etc.). Also fig.
1610. Shaks., Temp., I. ii. 326. Vrchins Shall for that vast of night that they may worke All exercise on thee.
a. 1649. Drumm. of Hawth., Poems, Wks. (1711), 34/2. Such as do Nations govern, and command Vasts of the Sea and Emperies of Land.
1667. Milton, P. L., VI. 203. Through the vast of Heav’n It sounded.
1795. W. Blake, Song Los, 42. And all the vast of Nature shrunk Before their shrunken eyes.
1838. Eliza Cook, England, iv. I’d tread the vast of mountain range, or spot serene and flowered.
1872. Geo. Eliot, Middlem., xlv. Which need never stop short at the boundary of knowledge, but can draw for ever on the vasts of ignorance.
2. dial. A very great number or amount.
1793. Piper of Peebles, 14. A vast o’ fouk a’ round about Come to the feast.
c. 1820. Hogg, Sheph. Wedding, i. They couldna get them [sc. leisters] sindry, else there had been a vast o bludeshed.
a. 1825–. in dialect glossaries (E. Anglia, Yks., Leic., etc.).
1853. R. S. Surtees, Soapey Sp. Tour (1893), 30. It takes a vast of clothes, even at Oxford prices, to come to a thousand pounds.
1888. Huxley, in Life (1900), II. xii. 188. I took a vast of trouble (as the country folks say) about it.
