Idiom
a bottomless pit
Meaning
Something that consumes endlessly and can never be filled or satisfied.
Examples
“That old house is a bottomless pit for money.”
“The failing project became a bottomless pit, absorbing every extra pound the board threw at it without ever showing a return.”
“Grief, he discovered, could be a bottomless pit, and no amount of work, distraction, or well-meaning company seemed able to fill the space the loss had opened up in him.”
Examples
simple
“That old house is a bottomless pit for money.”
contextual
“The failing project became a bottomless pit, absorbing every extra pound the board threw at it without ever showing a return.”
complex
“Grief, he discovered, could be a bottomless pit, and no amount of work, distraction, or well-meaning company seemed able to fill the space the loss had opened up in him.”
Origin
The bottomless pit is imagery from the apocalyptic vision of Revelation. In chapter 9, verses 1 and 2, a star falls and is given the key to the shaft of the abyss, which opens to release smoke and locusts — the text's picture of a fathomless underworld from which torment rises.
The King James rendering bottomless pit fixed the phrase in English, and its literal impossibility — a hole with no floor — is exactly what made it useful as a metaphor.
Detached from prophecy, a bottomless pit is now anything that swallows whatever you put in and demands more: an insatiable appetite, an endlessly loss-making venture, a need that no amount of money or effort can ever fill.
Stories
Judgment & the End · See all Biblical origin
End-times and final-judgment imagery, from the Gospels to Revelation.
Alpha and Omega — The beginning and the end; the most essential or all-encompassing element of something.
fire-and-brimstone — Threats of punishment or damnation, especially in stern moralising or preaching.
separate the sheep from the goats — To distinguish the worthy or capable from the unworthy or inadequate.
gnashing of teeth — Extreme distress, frustration, or anguished complaining.
cast into outer darkness — To be completely excluded, banished, or shut out from a group or from favour.
- Level
- C1 · Advanced
- Updated