abyssal

Pronounced: uh-BIH-suhl, adj

Notes: When I first glanced at this word, I thought it was “abysmal” (which meaning I know)

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Yesterday’s word

The word interregnum means “the period between the end of a reign and the beginning of the next; a time when there is no ruler”

First usage

Our word came into English in the late 1500s

Background / Comments

I remember running across this word in the Isaac Asimov novel Foundation – the first in “The Foundation Trilogy”, but now called “The Foundation Series” (because, roughly 30 years after the original trilogy, he added another four novels to the series, so it was no longer a “trilogy”). He uses interregnum to refer to the time of chaos between civilizations, and so I incorrectly thought it meant “a time of chaos”. Our word came from Latin, and is a combination of inter- (between) and regnum (reign).