a. [see -LESS.]
1. That has no bottom.
c. 1325. E. E. Allit. P., B. 1022. For hit [the Dead Sea] is brod & boþemlez, & bitter as þe galle.
1535. Coverdale, Job xxxvi. 16. So shall he kepe the … from the bottomlesse pytte that is beneth.
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts, 325. Let his neck be yoked in an old bottomless pail.
1641. Milton, Ch. Govt., II. Wks. (1851), 180. Unlesse her bottomlesse gorge may be satisfi’d with the blood of the Kings daughter the Church.
1710. Palmer, Proverbs, 172. Jupiter puts the discourses and promises of lovers into a bottomless bag.
1860. Dickens, Uncomm. Trav., xi. How knowingly (with a sheaf and a bottomless chair at our back) we should lounge on bridges.
b. fig. Without foundation, baseless.
1563. Davidson, Confut. Kennedy, in Misc. Wodrow Soc. (1844), 241. The rest of his lessone … is on ane boddomles ground.
1642. Prince Rupert, Declar., 6. Strange, false and bottomlesse untruths.
1866. Crump, Banking, viii. 175. Speculators … are often encouraged in their bottomless enterprises by obtaining credits with certain companies.
2. fig. Inexhaustible, unfathomable.
1526. Tindale, Doctr. Treat. (1848), 400. The judgments of God are bottomless.
1545. Brinklow, Lament. (1874), 86. Oh ye dispisers of the bottomlesse mercy of God.
1640–4. Sir J. Culpepper, in Rushw., Hist. Coll., III. (1692), I. 31. Besides the bottomless Perjury of an Et cætera.
1743. Tindal, trans. Rapin’s Hist. Eng., II. XVII. 129. Bottomless graces and immeasurable benefits.
1826. Scott, Woodst. (1832), 190. He must be bottomless if I cannot sound him before the night’s out.
Hence Bottomlessly adv., unfathomably; Bottomlessness, bottomless state or quality.
1627–8. Feltham, Resolves, xix. (1636), 65. Who … is so bottomlessly ill, as to love vice, because it is vice?
1642. Rogers, Naaman, 180. That wearisomenesse of Selfe, never settled, that bottomelessenesse, never grounded.
1854. Thoreau, Walden, xvi. 306. Men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.
