All 4 Uses of
abyss
in
The Age of Innocence
- Only old Catherine Mingott, with her absence of moral prejudices and almost parvenu indifference to the subtler distinctions, might have bridged the abyss; but she had never opened a book or looked at a picture, and cared for music only because it reminded her of gala nights at the Italiens, in the days of her triumph at the Tuileries.†
Chpt 12 *
- Archer said—and suddenly the same black abyss yawned before him and he felt himself sinking into it, deeper and deeper, while his voice rambled on smoothly and cheerfully: "Yes, of course I thought I'd lost the ring; no wedding would be complete if the poor devil of a bridegroom didn't go through that.†
Chpt 19
- "May—" he began, standing a few feet from her chair, and looking over at her as if the slight distance between them were an unbridgeable abyss.†
Chpt 32
- Two tears, the parched tears of the old, rolled down her puffy cheeks and vanished in the abysses of her bosom.†
Chpt 33
Definition:
-
(abyss) a hole or dropoff so deep the bottom cannot be seen -- often used figuratively to imply a frightening bottomless pit