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/

Adjective

aslant

1. (archaic, literary) Slanting.

   Synonyms: aslope, atilt, diagonal, oblique, slanted

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

     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.

Translations

slanting — see slanted

Adverb

aslant

1. (archaic, literary) At a slant.

   Synonyms: aslope, atilt, diagonally, obliquely

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

     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, Milkman, London: Faber & Faber, Chapter 3,

     […] 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)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• 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, London: Rest Fenner, 1817, Scene 1, p. 45,^[4]

     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, Penguin, 1981, Part 2, p. 209,^[5]

     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)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}

Anagrams

• Santal, alants, natals, santal