aslant

English

Etymology

From Middle English aslant (“at an angle, in a curve; from the side, deviously”), from on slante; equivalent to a- +‎ slant.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /əˈslænt/, /əˈslɑːnt/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• Audio (US):

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Adjective

aslant

1. (archaic, literary) Slanting.

   Synonyms: askew, aslope, atilt, diagonal, oblique, slanted; nonorthogonal, unperpendicular

   Antonyms: orthogonal, perpendicular, nonoblique

   Near-synonym: askance

   • 1601, C[aius] Plinius Secundus [i.e., Pliny the Elder], “[Book XVII.] 22.”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Historie of the World. Commonly Called, The Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus. […], (please specify |tome=1 or 2), London: […] Adam Islip, →OCLC, page 533:

     As for the manner and fashion of the cut [when pruning grapevines], it ought alwaies to be aslant, like a goats foot, that no drops of raine may settle and rest thereupon, but that euery shower may soon shoot off:

   • 1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, (please specify |part=I to IV), page 94:

     But their manner of writing is very peculiar, being neither from the left to the right, like the Europeans; nor from the right to the left, like the Arabians; nor from up to down, like the Chinese; nor from down to up, like the Cascagians; but aslant from one Corner of the Paper to the other, like Ladies in England.

   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 81, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 400:

     Meantime everything in the Pequod was aslant. To cross to the other side of the deck was like walking up the steep gabled roof of a house.

   • 1961, Walker Percy, The Moviegoer‎^[1], New York: Avon, published 1980, Part 3, Chapter 1, p. 107:

     Now she stands musing on the beach, leg locked, pelvis aslant, thumb and forefingers propped along the iliac crest and lightly, propped lightly as an athlete.

Derived terms

• aslantwise

Translations

slanting — see slanted

Adverb

aslant

1. (archaic, literary) At a slant.

   Synonyms: aslope, atilt, diagonally, obliquely

   • 1700, “The Twelfth Book of Ovid his Metamorphoses”, in John Dryden, transl., Fables, Ancient and Modern‎^[2], London: Jacob Tonson, page 447:

     The Shaft that slightly was impress’d,
     Now from his heavy Fall with weight increas’d,
     Drove through his Neck, aslant,

   • 1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter II, in Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. […], volume III, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, page 65:

     It [the light] led me aslant over the hill, through a wide bog;

   • 1914, Constance Garnett (translator), Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1917, Part 4, Chapter 4, p. 321,^[3]

     A wall with three windows looking out on to the canal ran aslant so that one corner formed a very acute angle, and it was difficult to see in it without very strong light.

   • 2018, Anna Burns, chapter 3, in Milkman, London: Faber & Faber:

     […] he was looking aslant and not directly at me; more of a gaze to the side of me.

Translations

at a slant

• Finnish: kallellaan (fi), vinossa (fi)
• Polish: na bakier (pl), krzywo (pl), na ukos (pl), na skos, skosem, ukośnie (pl)
• Scots: aswaip

Preposition

aslant

1. (archaic, literary) Diagonally over or across.

   Synonyms: aslope, athwart, atilt

   • c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene vii]:

     There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
     That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.

   • 1816, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Zapolya‎^[4], London: Rest Fenner, published 1817, Scene 1, p. 45:

     I oft have passed your cottage, and still prais’d
     Its beauty, and that trim orchard-plot, whose blossoms
     The gusts of April shower’d aslant its thatch.

   • 1979, Patrick White, The Twyborn Affair‎^[5], Penguin, published 1981, Part 2, p. 209:

     But aslant this particular glass reclined a single, white, wintry rose, possibly the last rose ever, its invalid complexion infused with a delicate transcendent green.

Translations

diagonally over or across

• Finnish: poikittain (fi)

Anagrams

• Santal, alants, natals, santal