Abysmal or abyss formerly believed to be a bottomless pit beneath the earth
As low as possible or deplorably bad
It was formerly believed that beneath the earth was a bottomless pit or an infinite empty space called the abyss; the word is from Greek abyssos "bottomless". This pit was often thought to be the same as hell. The word abyss is now used to mean "any vast or endless space" or "the deepest levels of the ocean". Figuratively, it is used as a condition of utter destruction or a scene of misery and hopelessness.
—Reader's Digest
But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age. . . .
—Winston Churchill, speech (1941)
The adjective abyssal means only "of or relating to the deepest levels of the ocean."
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Abyss is one of the few English words that derive from Sumerian, the world's first written language, which evolved some 5,000 years ago in the lower Tigris and Euphrates Valley of what is now called Iraq. The word came into English in the late 14th century from the Latin word abyssus, meaning "bottomless, the deep", but has been traced ultimately to the primordial sea that the Sumerians called the Abzu. —Hendrickson
The abyss or deep sea
Much of the interest in the ocean relates to the deep sea—the abyss that is the subject of this page. Nearly three quarters of the surface of the earth is covered by the sea. Of the 197 million square miles of the earth's area, 139 million are the world ocean; the great interconnected complex of the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian and the Arctic oceans, the Mediterranean and the Baltic, the Red, Black, and the White seas, and all the rest. Seventy-one percent of the world is ocean. Of that, 97 percent is more than 200 meters or 656 feet, in depth. This is the abyss, the "deep sea", which covers almost two-thirds of the earth's surface.
The abyss is revealing many more fauna than we ever thought existed.
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All of the rich life familiar to humans, the bustling and buzzing crowds of mammals, birds, and insects and the trees, grass, and flowers of the land, as well as the crabs, snails, fish, and algae of the shallow seas, are crowded into a relatively minor portion of the earth's living space. The far vaster, unseen area of the deep sea has its own fauna, an assemblage representing nearly all branches of the animal kingdom from the simplest one-celled protozoans to the higher vertebrates. The darkness, cold and pressure of the abyssal regions have left their imprint on the creatures that have chosen it as home, so that these animals include some of the most bizarre and incredible of beings. —Idyll, Abyss
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