aslant

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

• IPA^(key): /əˈslænt/, /əˈslɑːnt/

aslant

1. (archaic, literary) Slanting.

   Synonyms: aslope, atilt, diagonal, oblique, slanted

   • 1601, C[aius] Plinius Secundus [i.e., Pliny the Elder], “[Book XVII.] 22.”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Historie of the VVorld. Commonly Called, The Natvrall Historie of C. Plinivs Secvndus. […], (please specify |tome=1 or 2), London: […] Adam Islip, published 1635, OCLC 1180792622, 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 995220039, (please specify |part=I, II, III or 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 57395299, 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, New York: Avon, 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.

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,

     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 3163777, 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,

     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.

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 606515358, [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,

     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,

     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.

• Santal, alants, natals, santal