a. [f. VAST a. + -Y.] Vast, immense. (In mod. use after Shakespeare.)
1596. Shaks., 1 Hen. IV., III. i. 52. I can call Spirits from the vastie Deepe. Ibid. (1599), Hen. V., II. iv. 105. The poore Soules, for whom this hungry Warre Opens his vastie lawes.
1605. Play of Stucley, K iij b. Which makes me … sorrow that thy valour should be sunke In such a vasty vnknowne sea of Armes.
1610. Holland, Camden’s Brit., I. 330. I saw in a white-sandy ground divers vastie, craggie stones of strange formes.
1792. R. Cumberland, Calvary, 182. Noah can tell How all the earth with violence was fill’d, Or e’er the fountains of the vasty deep Were broken up.
1845. Ford, Handbk. Sp., I. 77. The feudal castle, the vasty Escorial, the rock-built alcazar.
1867. E. F. Bull, Ecce Cœlum, i. 10. Not a whisper, not a rustle, through all the vasty dome.
fig. 1848. Bailey, Festus (ed. 3), 63. Yon pretty little star Shines on a vasty falsehood.
1885. Pater, Marius, II. 48. Those vasty conceptions of the later Greek philosophy.
