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Sunday, February 22, 2026

GAD Mystery Word of the Day: Abysm of Time

 


My new bookish meme for 2026: the Golden Age of Detection (GAD) Mystery Word of the Day. Whenever I find a word that I'm unfamiliar with--or shall we say not absolutely confident I know the exact meaning of, I'm going to actually take time to look it up and share it with mystery-lovers everywhere. 😊

Today's GAD Mystery Word (phrase) of the Day is "abysm of time": phrase from Shakespeare's The Tempest referring to the distant, murky, and nearly forgotten past. It suggests the past is a deep, dark, and indistinct abyss—a "bottomless pit" of memory. The phrase is also used to represent the immense depth of history.

As to his [Plumley's] origins, none could say for certain. There were some who professed to have known him, in the dark backward and abysm of time, as a solicitor's clerk or a kind of glorified insurance agent; but it is to be doubted whether such knowledge was other than it usually is in these cases, the boasting of some cheap liar broadcast into rumour. (The Plumley Inheritance ~Christopher Bush)

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