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Oblique   Listen
verb
Oblique  v. i.  (past & past part. obliqued; pres. part. obliquing)  
1.
To deviate from a perpendicular line; to move in an oblique direction. "Projecting his person towards it in a line which obliqued from the bottom of his spine."
2.
(Mil.) To march in a direction oblique to the line of the column or platoon; formerly accomplished by oblique steps, now by direct steps, the men half-facing either to the right or left.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Oblique" Quotes from Famous Books



... became inaudible, and the house was quiet. But presently, as Sheridan sat staring angrily at the fire, the shuffling of a pair of slippers could be heard descending, and Mrs. Sheridan made her appearance, her oblique expression and the state of her toilette being those of a person who, after trying unsuccessfully to sleep on one side, has got up to ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington

... extraordinary document shows an unusual sense of moral outrage. The masterly analysis of the Diaz regime in Mexico coupled with the manner in which—always pretending to be examining the conduct of the Mexican—he stabs at Yuan Shih-kai, won the applause of a race that delights in oblique attacks and was ample proof that great trouble was brewing. The document was read in every part of China and everywhere approved. Although it suffers from translation, the text remains singularly interesting as a disclosure of the Chinese mentality; ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... was plain that the Fury could not possibly be hove down under circumstances of such frequent and imminent risk. I therefore directed a fourth anchor, with two additional cables, to be disposed, with the hope of breaking some of the force of the ice, by its offering a more oblique resistance than the other, and thus by degrees turning the direction of the pressure from the ships. We had scarcely completed this new defence, when the largest floe we had seen since leaving Port Bowen came sweeping along the shore, having a motion to the southward of not less than a mile ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... round in front of the regiment just in time to see a long line of men in gray rise from behind the stone wall of the Hagerstown pike, which was to their right, and pour in a volley; but it mostly went too high. He then ordered his men to left oblique. ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt

... out, in a way she knew, and she looked down and saw Cap'n Oliver. He was staring up at her window, as he answered a neighbor's greeting, and he gave a little oblique nod at her, and stumped along up the path. At once she recalled herself to the day, and went downstairs to meet him. It seemed very simple and plain now ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... distinguishes Dryden by his "Rehearsal" title of Bayes; and, among many other oblique expressions of ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... centuries, being the last important place on the great trading-route from Poland to Berlin. It has annual fairs which are relics of these olden times, interesting mediaeval churches, and a town-house bearing on its gable the device of the Hanseatic League,—an oblique rod supported by a shorter ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... pasture lards the rother's sides, The want that makes him lean. Who dares, who dares. In purity of manhood stand upright And say 'This man's a flatterer'? if one be, So are they all: for every grise of fortune Is smooth'd by that below: the learned pate Ducks to the golden fool: all is oblique; There's nothing level in our ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... darker purpose] [Darker, for more secret; not for indirect, oblique. WARBURTON.] This word may admit a further explication. We shall express our darker purpose: that is, we have already made known in some measure our design of parting the kingdom; we will now ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... sold to the market-men. The snapper slowly appears and disappears, leaving scarcely a ripple; and the hunter cautiously approaching usually takes him by the tail. The terrapin, on the contrary, is quick, and will descend in an oblique direction, so that a hand-net is needed unless he happens to come up near by. If he is near enough the man jumps for him. The time for hunting is the still hour ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various

... tale, similar in disguised motive, may win, where an orderly discourse might unhappily repel: a teacher's best influences are the indirect: like the conquering troops at Culloden, his charge will be oblique; his weapon will strike the unguarded flank, and not the opposing target. The sixth, "It is finished;" perhaps, not only as a fact on the true, the necessary value of the Christian scheme of redemption being so completed; but, more generally, to display the evils ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... the fire of their guns and musketry, without being able to make any adequate return against the concealed foes, General Graham determined to turn it by working round its flank. Accordingly, after a halt, the column continued its march in an oblique direction across the ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... interest. He saw a young man standing bareheaded on the long flight of steps, his fists clenched in an attitude of arrested action,—his sandy hair, his tanned face, his tense figure copper-coloured in the oblique rays. Claude would have been astonished if he could have known how he seemed to ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... a downward, oblique stab in the throat which had pierced the larynx and penetrated the jugular vein. The deceased would have been unable to cry out and would probably have quickly become insensible from asphyxiation. Unless he was left-handed the stab could scarcely ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William

... Deep oblique holes were then made with a round crowbar under the stump singled out for execution. This hole should be as nearly horizontal as possible and directly under the stump so that all the explosive force may be expended ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... With this oblique and feminine reply, and one look of unfathomable reproach from her soft eyes, she turned her back on him; but, remembering her manners, courtesied at the door; and so retired; and unpretending Virtue lent her such true dignity that he was struck dumb, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... which is insignificant if it arises from errors of refraction, but is very serious if it betokens progressive or congenital diseases of the brain or its membranous coverings. Other anomalies are asymmetry of the iris, which frequently differs in colour from its fellow; oblique eyelids, a Mongolian characteristic, with the edge of the upper eyelid folding inward or a prolongation of the internal fold of the eyelid, which Metchnikoff regards as a ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... bedded in the rocks, and he said they were ancestors of my father. My mother heard him say it; and he said those skeletons were two million years old, which astonished her and made her Kentucky pretensions look small and pretty antiphonal, not to say oblique. Let me see. . . . I used to know the meaning of those words, but . . . well, it was years ago, and 'tisn't as vivid now as it was when they were fresh. That sort of words doesn't keep, in the kind of climate ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain

... of a growing incredulity. The best way of proving her faith in her grandfather was not to be afraid of his critics. She had no notion where these shadowy antagonists lurked; for she had never heard of the great man's doctrine being directly combated. Oblique assaults there must have been, however, Parthian shots at the giant that none dared face; and she thirsted to close with such assailants. The difficulty was to find them. She began by re-reading the Works; thence she passed to the writers of the same school, those whose rhetoric ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... my companions agreed with me that it was advisable to leave the bed of the river for the spur of the mountains where the river apparently took its rise. We crossed the stream, and commenced a gradual but oblique ascent of the spur. But after climbing for some hours we found our further progress stopped by a wide and deep gully, a sinister place, full of masses of dark green rocks. At the foot of one of the largest of these ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... families who keep their infants a long time on such contrivances. A sure mark by which to discriminate accidental pressure of this sort from one intentionally produced is not at hand; it may be that in accidental deformation oblique position of the deformed spot is more frequent; at any rate, the difference in the Philippines is a very striking one, since there not so much the occiput as the front and middle portions suffer from the disfigurements, and thereby deformations are produced that have had their most ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... an oblique start. He did not say to her: "I'll tell you about this. You saw me get ready for Trampas because I have been ready for him any time these five years." He began far off from the point with that rooted caution of his—that ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... the captain; once, looking back along the line as we marched company front, he said, "The ancestors of this bunch certainly must have been a lot of snakes!" But I'll venture to say that none of us, after this, will forget how to oblique in making the turn. ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French

... paths will choose. And first the margin's breadth his soul employs, Pure, snowy, broad, the type of nobler joys. In vain might Homer roll the tide of song, Or Horace smile, or Tully charm the throng, If, crost by Pallas' ire, the trenchant blade Or too oblique or near the edge invade, The Bibliomane exclaims with haggard eye, "No margin!"—turns in haste, ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper

... heart which has been boiled, the arrangement of the fibres is seen to be different. All the fibres in the parietes and septum are circular, as in the sphincters; those, again, which are in the columns extend lengthwise, and are oblique longitudinally; and so it comes to pass that when all the fibres contract simultaneously, the apex of the cone is pulled towards its base by the columns, the walls are drawn circularly together into a globe—the whole heart, in short, is contracted ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... battle, and committed to his generals the conduct of this decisive day. [84] They deserved his confidence by the valor and military skill which they exerted. They wisely began the action upon the left; and advancing their whole wing of cavalry in an oblique line, they suddenly wheeled it on the right flank of the enemy, which was unprepared to resist the impetuosity of their charge. But the Romans of the West soon rallied, by the habits of discipline; and the Barbarians of Germany supported the renown of their national bravery. The engagement ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... He bid His angels turn askance The poles of Earth some ten degrees or more From the sun's axle; they with labour pushed Oblique the centric globe,... ...to bring in change Of seasons to each clime; else had the spring Perpetual smiled on Earth with verdant flowers, Equal in days ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... this boulder, was a gigantic and florid person, so tall that the heads of few men reached to his shoulder; a person of handsome exterior, high-featured and blond, having a narrow, small head, and vivid light blue eyes, and the chest of a stallion; a person whose left eyebrow had an odd oblique droop, so that the stupendous man appeared to be winking the information that he ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell

... finally passed out of his hands. As with Reynolds, his motto was "Work! work! work!" and, like him, he expressed great dislike for talking artists. Talkers may sow, but the silent reap. "Let us be DOING something," was his oblique mode of rebuking the loquacious and admonishing the idle. He once related to his friend Constable that when he studied at the Scottish Academy, Graham, the master of it, was accustomed to say to the students, in the words of Reynolds, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... critical intention. All the time she had, Aggie thought, been choosing her words judicially, so that each unnecessary eulogy of John should strike at some weak spot in poor Arthur. She felt that Susie was not above paying off her John's old scores by an oblique and cowardly blow at the man who had supplanted him. She wished that Susie would either leave off talking about ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair

... behind. She was gone, was it in resentment, was it in disdain? thinking of him in his true aspect as a false lover, believing him to have worn a false semblance, justly despising him for an attempt to play upon her. Was this possible? He thought (with that oblique sort of literary tendency of his) of Hamlet with the recorder. Can you play upon this pipe?—and yet you think you can play upon me! As a matter of fact there could nothing have been found in heaven or earth less like Hamlet than Chatty Warrender; ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... demand of the new gift, therefore, is that the oblique line, hitherto only transiently indicated, shall become an abiding feature of ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... was, making believe to be absorbed in his book, and letting his eyes rise from time to time as if in contemplation. He was about sixty feet from the youth in an oblique line. Once the little fellow looked around, but Evan saw the beginning of the movement and was deep in study in plenty of time. The sober background of filled bookshelves afforded Evan good protective colouring. Across the smaller room the librarian was likewise ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... oblique eyes follow me as I go. And something like a feeling of remorse seizes me at thus abruptly abandoning the void, dusty, crumbling temple, with its mirrorless altar and its colourless lanterns, and the decaying sculptures of ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... the bodies of other quadrupeds are supported by their legs. Hence, if the animal be placed on the floor, its belly touches the ground. The wrist and ankle are joined to the fore-arm and leg in an oblique direction; so that the palm or sole, instead of being directed downwards towards the surface of the ground, as in other animals, is turned inward towards the body, in such a manner that it is impossible for the sloth to place ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... broadly heart-shaped, with a serrate margin and a petiole about as long as the blade, sometimes longer; base of leaf not oblique 4. Idesia. ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar

... eight queens on the board so that no queen shall attack another and so that no three queens shall be in a straight line in any oblique direction? Another glance at the diagram will show that this arrangement will not answer the conditions, for in the two directions indicated by the dotted lines there are three queens in a straight line. There is only one of the ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... other foot, and skips to the left. Then everything disappears from in front of the saddle—the wicked ears, now laid level backward—the black, tangled mane—the shining neck with the sweeping curve of a circular saw—the clean, oblique shoulders—they have all disappeared, and there is nothing in front of the saddle but a precipice. There is something ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... to take a quick, oblique step toward the port lines. At that very instant a huge comber climbed aboard over the stern, the great bulk of water lifting Dave as though he ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... Cross, as it is called, consisting of four stars, three of the first magnitude and the fourth somewhat smaller, arranged in the form of an oblique crucifix, pointing across the firmament "athwartship-like," as the skipper explained one night-watch when the brothers were looking out together. Only once in the year, Captain Brown said, is this cross perfectly perpendicular ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... is in his heart yet, and after he has slept awhile he will come to himself, and be a wiser man for it, till the hour of his real time shall come," returned Hawkeye, casting another oblique glance at the insensible body, while he filled his charger with admirable nicety. "Carry him in, Uncas, and lay him on the sassafras. The longer his nap lasts the better it will be for him, as I doubt whether he can find a proper cover for such a shape on these ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... had passed the ponds and had traversed in an oblique direction the large clearing which lies on the right of the Avenue de Bellevue, and reached that turf alley which nearly makes the circuit of the hill, and covers the arch of the ancient aqueduct of the Abbey of Chelles, he caught sight, over the top of the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... usually write "Beni" for "Banu;" the oblique for the nominative. I prefer "Odhrah" or "Ozrah" to Udhrah; because the Ayn before the Zl takes in pronunciation ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... a feeling of repulsion on the faces of others, when her true destiny is to move all hearts about her to emotions of grace and love. One result of this inward trouble is that an old maid's glance is always oblique, less from modesty than from fear and shame. Such beings never forgive society for their false position because they never forgive ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac

... an "Oblique Halving Joint," where the oblique piece, or strut, does not run through (Fig. 28, 3). This type of joint is used for strengthening framings and shelf brackets; an example of the latter is shown at Fig. 48. A strut or rail of this type prevents movement or distortion to a frame ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham

... the sceptic had either not examined the evidence, or, having examined it, refused to accept its plain and unavoidable consequences. I should be sorry to think, with Dr. Rigby, that it was a case of "oblique vision;" I should be unwilling to force home the argumentum ad hominem of Dr. Blundell, but I would not consent to make a question of a momentous fact which is no longer to be considered as a subject for trivial discussions, but to be acted upon with silent promptitude. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... of cherished suspicions not without likelihood. Analogically, he couples the slanting cut of the equivocator's coat-tails with the sinister cast in his eye; he weighs slyboot's sleek speech in the light imparted by the oblique import of the smooth slope of his worn boot-heels; the insinuator's undulating flunkyisms dovetail into those of the flunky beast that windeth his way ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... despotic and with the same paternal instincts as his compatriots who, centuries before when conquering the new world, had clarified its native blood. Like the Castilian conquistadors, he had a fancy for copper-colored beauty with oblique eyes and straight hair. When Desnoyers saw him going off on some sudden pretext, putting his horse at full gallop toward a neighboring ranch, he would say to himself, smilingly, "He is going in search of a new peon who will help work his ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... question how far he or others had actually gone, but how far they had a right to go, according to the law. His conduct was not the limit of the law, nor did treasonable excess begin where prudence or principle taught him to stop short, though this was the oblique inference liable to be drawn from his line of defence. Mr. Tooke was uneasy and apprehensive for the issue of the Government-prosecution while in confinement, and said, in speaking of it to a friend, with a morbid feeling and an ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... grass, and a long flight of steps descends from every door to the pavement. Ornamental trees—the broad-leafed horse-chestnut, the elm so lofty and bending, the graceful but infrequent willow, and others whereof I know not the names—grow thrivingly among brick and stone. The oblique rays of the sun are intercepted by these green citizens, and by the houses, so that one side of the street is a shaded and pleasant walk. On its whole extent there is now but a single passenger, advancing from the upper ...
— Sights From A Steeple (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... claws. Every one must be familiar with the manner in which cats, with out-stretched legs and extended claws, will card the legs of chairs and of men; so with the jaguar; and of these trees the bark was worn quite smooth in front; on each side there were deep grooves, extending in an oblique line nearly a yard in length. The scars were of different ages, arid the inhabitants could always tell when a jaguar was in the neighborhood, by his recent autograph on one of ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty

... return of the real tenant who hasn't returned up to this hour"—with an oblique glance at the ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... the two oblique ones approaching from Ludgate Hill and from Cannon Street. The upward view from the churchyard on the south side by the angle of nave and transept gives the proportions of the lower stages of the dome effectively; ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock

... relapse; The threaded light prints through them on the pebbles In scarcely tarnished twinklings. Curving of spotted spines, Slow up-shifts, Lazy convolutions: Then a sudden swift straightening And darting below: Oblique grey shadows Athwart a pale casement. Roped and curled, Green man-eating eels Slumber in undulate rhythms, With crests laid horizontal on their backs. Barred fish, Striped fish, Uneven disks of fish, Slip, slide, whirl, turn, And never touch. Metallic ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... Mr. Payne (i. 112): I know nothing of it. Other hands are: the Ta'alik; hanging or oblique, used for finer MSS. and having, according to Richardson, "the same analogy to the Naskhi as our Italic has to the Roman." The Nasta' lik (not Naskh-Ta'alik) much used in India, is, as the name suggests, a mixture of the Naskhi (writing of transactions) and the Ta'alik. The Shikastah ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... center of the Rascettes, takes an oblique course from Fate Line, ending toward Mount Mercury. If straight and well defined, there is little liability to constitutional diseases; when it does not extend to Head Line, steady mental labor cannot be performed; when it is broad and deep on Mount Mercury, diminishing ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... Monsieur," with a wonder why this man laughed, "I know no more than you. But I do know that for the past month every Englishman has been subjected to this surveillance, and has submitted with more grace than you," with an oblique glance. ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... Blue, later purple; 1/2 in. long, growing downward in 1-sided spike, 15 to 40 flowered; calyx oblique, small, with unequal teeth; corolla butterfly-shaped, consisting of standard, wings, and keel, all oblong; the first clawed, the second oblique, and adhering to the shorter keel; 10 stamens, 1 detached from other 9. Stem: Slender, weak, climbing ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... free from the sheath the moment after; and exclaiming, "Now there's but two of you, I can manage you," he pushed on his horse against the man who had seized his bridle, aiming a very unpleasant sort of oblique cut at the worthy personage's head, which, had it taken effect, would probably have left him with a considerable portion less of skull than that with which he entered ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... rising, the blue sky is fading a little below; in the nearest Paris suburb the windows are shining in the oblique rays of the setting sun. It will soon be night, and upon this carpet of dead leaves, which crackle under the poet's tread, other leaves will fall. They fall rarely, slowly, but continually. The frost ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... slowly, and with effort, like a man whose memory is labouring to give up its dead, while the attorney, with his spectacles on his nose, was making notes. The speaker ceased abruptly, and turned his pallid visage and jealous, oblique eyes ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... tribute of a second glance, and Mrs. Fitch had been enthusiastic about her. His tolerant spirit had not visited upon the young Holtons the sins of their uncle. Charles's devotion to Phil had rather amused him; he had taken it as an oblique compliment to himself, assuming that it was due to anxiety on Charles's part to ingratiate himself with Phil's father quite as ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... land of groves and verdure stretched out before me. A few glooming vapours, I can hardly call them clouds, rested upon the extremities of the landscape; and, through their medium, the sun cast an oblique and dewy ray. Peasants were returning homeward from the cultivated hillocks and corn-fields, singing as they went, and calling to each other over the hills; whilst the women were milking goats before the wickets of the cottages, and preparing their ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... support of the theory that in Byzantine buildings there is an intentional widening of the structure from the ground upwards. 'It will also be observed,' he says, 'that the cornice is horizontal, whereas the marble casing above and below the cornice is cut and fitted in oblique lines.... The outward bend on the right side of the choir is 11-1/2 inches in 33 feet. The masonry surfaces step back above the middle string-course. That these bends are not due to thrust is abundantly apparent from the fact that they are continuous and uniform in inclination up to the ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... year, and produce those marvellous sunset effects which, if they were not known to be made up of kitchen coal-smoke and animal exhalations, would be rapturously applauded. Behind the perpendicular, oblique, zigzagged, and curved zinc 'tall-boys,' that formed a grey pattern not unlike early Gothic numerals against the sky, the men and women on the tops of the omnibuses saw an irradiation of topaz hues, darkened here and there ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... black with hatred, for he had watched 'the eyes of Madame Chalice fill with tears at the old sergeant's tale of Auerstadt, had noticed her admiring glance, "at this damned comedian," as he now called Valmond. When he came to her carriage, she said, with oblique suggestion: ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... about and saw him with the glass of sparkling wine outreached to Blake, who was eying it with a peculiar oblique gaze. ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... former should change positions with the brigade of volunteers in the second line. Should the general think it safe to order the whole of Cass's brigade to the right, without replacing it with another, General Cass will march to the right, formed in oblique eschelons of companies. It will be the business of General M'Arthur, in the event of his wing being refused to watch the motions of the enemy, with the assistance of the artillery, to prevent his front line at least ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... the interruptions thus caused, the lower stake was fixed in a few minutes. The Professor then swung his axe vigorously, and began to cut an oblique stair-case in the ice up the sheer ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... lined within by three layers of muscles, longitudinal, transverse, and oblique, all destitute of the transverse striae, characteristic of voluntary muscles; they run from the bottom of the peduncle to the base of the capitulum, as in Lepas, or half way up it, as in Conchoderma; ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin

... bladed-paddle, as did also those who had visited the Discovery. In his size and features, he exactly resembled those we saw in Prince William's Sound, and in the Great River, but he was quite free from paint of any kind, and had the perforation of his lips made in an oblique direction, without any ornament in it. He did not seem to understand any of the words commonly used by our visitors in the Sound, when repeated to him. But, perhaps, our faulty pronunciation, rather than his ignorance of the dialect, may be ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... use had long made familiar to its adversaries, it would have run the risk of being cut to pieces man by man a dozen times before it could hope to range its disciplined masses on the field of battle. Former Assyrian invasions had, as a general rule, taken an oblique course towards some of the spurs of this formidable chain, and had endeavoured to neutralise its defences by outflanking them, either by proceeding westwards along the basins of the Supnat and the Arzania, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... he wished to be helped,—did n't remove the obstacle to his marrying in a year or two Lady Vandeleur. Yet he continued to look to me for inspiration,—I must say it at the cost of making him appear a very feeble-minded gentleman. There was a moment when I thought him capable of an oblique movement, of temporizing with a view to escape. If he succeeded in postponing his marriage long enough, the Bernardstones would throw him over, and I suspect that for a day he entertained the idea of fixing this responsibility ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James

... he would have insisted on marrying her. Nettie was not indifferent to him. An impersonal feeling had attracted him to her—a resentment of her treatment by the larger part of Salem, particularly the oblique admiration of the men. His supersensitiveness to any form of injustice had driven him into the protest of calling and accompanying her, with an exaggerated politeness, about the streets. It had not been ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... boulders of Patagonia and Fuegia. M. Gay states that the granite does not occur in situ within a distance of twenty leagues ("Annales des Science Nat. " 1 series tome 28. M. Gay, as I was informed, penetrated the Cordillera by the great oblique valley of Los Cupressos, and not by the most direct line.); I suspect, for several reasons, that it will ultimately be found at a much less distance, though certainly not in the immediate neighbourhood. The boulders found by MM. Meyen and Gay on ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin

... a path oblique to the room and paced to and fro, struggling with intolerable vast impressions. The things he had derived from the cylinders and the things he had seen, conflicted, confused him. It seemed to him the most amazing thing of all ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... grievance, of infinite abuse: of which source of corrupt power we charge Mr. Hastings with having availed himself, in filling up the void of direct pay by finding out and countenancing every kind of oblique and unjust emolument; though it must be confessed that he is far from being solely guilty ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... flanks of the Aiguilles, but not accurately its position, which is somewhat behind the mass of mountain supposed to be cut through by the section. But the top of the Montanvert is actually formed, as shown at M, by the crests of the oblique beds of slaty crystallines. Every traveller must remember the steep and smooth beds of rock like sloping walls, down which, and over the ledges of which, the path descends from the cabin to the edge of the glacier. These sloping walls are formed by the inner sides of the crystalline beds,[60] as ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... admiral, not being complete master of this subject, thought this of very difficult comprehension; and observes that probably when at the equinoctial, the full orbit of the star is seen; whereas, the nearer one approaches the pole it seems the less, because the Heavens are more oblique. As for the variation, I believe the star has the quality of all the four quarters, like the needle, which if touched to the east side points to the east, and so of the west, north, and south; wherefore, he that makes a compass covers ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... first to the eighth point, it reaches and is fastened to the line to which its first part was fastened. Thus, it makes as much progress in its longitudinal advance to the eighth point as in its oblique advance over eight points. In the same manner, withes for the eight divisions of the diameter, fastened obliquely at the intersections on the entire longitudinal and peripheral surface, make spiral channels which naturally look just like those ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... his father's command, and steered towards the farther shore, turning the head of the boat in an oblique direction, a little way up the lake. Presently Mr. Holiday saw some friends of his in a boat that was coming in the opposite direction. He ordered Rollo to steer towards them. Rollo did so, and soon the boats came alongside. The oarsmen ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott

... to look up the avenue, which the sun never penetrates except when it rises or when it sets, striping the road like a zebra with its oblique rays, my view was obstructed by an outline of rising ground; after that is passed, the long avenue is obstructed by a copse, within which the roads meet at a cross-ways, in the centre of which stands a stone obelisk, for all the world like an eternal exclamation mark. From ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... gate clicked. He was gone. Cuckoo cast an oblique glance up at the stars before she shut the door, and retraced her ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... countenances. To cite an extreme case, the first view of Giotto's frescoes, where men and women with bodies of board, long jointless fingers, rigid plastered hair, and dark-rimmed slits for eyes whose oblique glance imparts an air of suspicion to the whole assembly, will suggest merely a notion of their grotesqueness. By and by we shall grow used to the deformities, and recognize the primitive truthfulness of attitude and expression, the spirit which animates these ungainly forms and faces, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... effect a cause would produce. I know that a stone, when descending, ought to describe a perpendicular: I also know, that if it encounters any other body which changes its course, it is obliged to take an oblique direction, but if its fall be interrupted by several contrary powers, which act upon it alternately, I am no longer competent to determine what line it will describe. It may be a parabola, an ellipsis, spiral, circular, &c. this will depend on the impulse, it receives, and ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... This oblique and cautious reference to his son's private life marked a new stage in their relations: it was actually the first occasion, in all their intercourse as father and son, upon which the sex-question had ever been broached between them. It was no wonder, therefore, that so far they had ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... of the word he is a decent member of society. A certain natural pedantry aids him in this, which harmonizes with his money-making neurosis,—a degenerated imaginativeness seeking expression in financial adventure. Taking him all in all, he is so intensely repulsive to me—with his eyeglass, oblique eyes, long legs, and sallow, hairless face—that I doubt if I am capable of judging him objectively. Nevertheless I am quite sure that unless he loses his own money I shall not lose mine. But I put it down, in ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... and fail to' enjoy. Raise, then, O reader! to the lofty wheels, with me, Thy ken directed to the point, whereat One motion strikes on th' other. There begin Thy wonder of the mighty Architect, Who loves his work so inwardly, his eye Doth ever watch it. See, how thence oblique Brancheth the circle, where the planets roll To pour their wished influence on the world; Whose path not bending thus, in heav'n above Much virtue would be lost, and here on earth, All power well nigh extinct: or, from direct Were its ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... the start of them, and he was also on a higher level, so that the Germans must climb at an oblique angle to reach him. ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach

... question, of where the bullet went afterward? Was the angle at which it had been fired acute enough to send it out of a window diagonally opposed? No; even if the pistol had been held closer to the man firing it than she had reason to believe, the angle still would be oblique enough to carry it on ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... part of the coast whence numerous cargoes of slaves were still embarked. A short time before sunset they made the land. Soon after this, as Jack was standing up on the stern-sheets, his eye fell on a white spark glistening brightly in the oblique rays of the departing luminary. He brought his glass to bear on the subject. Adair took a look at it, and so did Needham. They all agreed that the sail in sight was a square topsail schooner standing ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... before stated, that as the clouds formed in the experimental tube became denser, the polarisation of the light discharged at right angles to the beam became weaker, the direction of maximum polarisation becoming oblique to the beam. Experiments on the fumes of chloride of ammonium gave me also reason to suspect that the position of the neutral point was not constant, but that it varied with the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... in A, Figure 14, is shown according to the conventions of oblique, or two-point perspective; it can equally be represented in a manner correspondent to parallel perspective. The parallel perspective of a cube appears as a square inside another square, with lines connecting ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... Gyr-Falcon family (Polyboriniae), and was one of the species peculiar to South America (Polyborus chimango, Vieil). The whole of the upper part of the body is brown, but single feathers here and there have a whitish-brown edge. On the tail are several indistinct oblique stripes. The under-part of the body is whitish-brown, and is also marked with transverse stripes feebly defined. The bird I shot measured from the point of the beak to the end of the tail 1 foot 6-1/2 inches. Though these Gyr-Falcons live socially together, yet they are very greedy and contentious ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... General Faskally, you know," she replied, after a pause, in her strange, oblique manner. "Mr. Le Geyt ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... mighty precipices as in those of the opposite side; but their front is much more broken by bold promontories, and their tabular tops, instead of lying horizontal, slope up at an angle of forty-five degrees or more from the spot where we were standing, and make a succession of oblique prism-sections whose upper edges are between three and four thousand feet in height. But the glory of this southern wall comes at the termination of our view opposite the North Dome. Here the precipice rises to the height of nearly one sheer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... anterior, and posterior sides of the eyeball. These are the superior, inferior, anterior, and posterior recti. Running from the front of the orbit obliquely to the underside of the eyeball is the inferior oblique muscle. Corresponding to it above is a superior oblique. A lachrymal gland lies in the postero-inferior angle of the orbit, and a Handerian gland in the corresponding position in front. In addition to the upper and lower ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... epic under that name, but as a proof of his passion, one day he sent her three dozen of anagrams all on her lovely name. Scioppius imagined himself fortunate that his adversary Scaliger was perfectly Sacrilege in all the oblique cases of the Latin language; on this principle Sir John Wiat was made out, to his own satisfaction—a wit. They were not always correct when a great compliment was required; the poet John Cleveland was strained hard to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... lay the Senator, on his back, sliding, in an oblique direction, straight toward the pool. His booted feet were already in the seething waves; his nails were dug into the slippery soil; he ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... feet in height, are exposed to view. They confirm Schmerling's doctrine, that most of the materials, organic and inorganic, now filling the caverns, have been washed into them through narrow vertical or oblique fissures, the upper extremities of which are choked up with soil and gravel, and would scarcely ever be discoverable at the surface, especially in so wooded a country. Among the sections obtained by quarrying, one of the finest which I saw ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... walking on the side of the mountain, they observed that the conies, which the rain had driven from their burrows, had taken shelter among the bushes, and formed holes behind them, tending upwards, in an oblique line. "It has been the opinion of antiquity," said Imlac, "that human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals; let us, therefore, not think ourselves degraded by learning from the cony. We may escape, by piercing the mountain in the same direction. We will ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... continued in vain all day and far into the night. At last from a little narrow chest, into which the remains had been almost crushed together, the bishop's red-gloved hands drew the dwindled body, shrunken inconceivably, but still with every feature of the face traceable in a sudden oblique ray of ghastly dawn. ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater

... at hide and seek, the hideous debauchee of a heart, worse than all the lubricity of the Romans, or the Saturnalia of Priapus; bastard parody of vice itself as well as of virtue; loathsome comedy where all is whispering and oblique glances, where all is small, elegant and deformed like the porcelain monsters brought from China; lamentable derision of all that is beautiful and ugly, divine and infernal; a shadow without a body, a skeleton of all ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... have finished one stitch, carry the needle under one thread, in an oblique line, to the next stitch, see fig. 273. The whole pattern is worked ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont

... his desk a well-stuffed and tightly sealed legal-sized envelope. He turned to the Japanese, as if for approval or permission, and Dr. Ichi, without removing his bright, oblique eyes from Martin's face, inclined his head in agreement with that unspoken communication. The lawyer faced Martin again, but the latter had the feeling that, despite Smatt's heavy voice and forceful personality, it was the silent little Dr. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... so suddenly that it seemed to jump out of the green tracery about it, my eyes lit upon a black face watching me. I saw that it was the simian creature who had met the launch upon the beach. He was clinging to the oblique stem of a palm-tree. I gripped my stick, and stood up facing him. He began chattering. "You, you, you," was all I could distinguish at first. Suddenly he dropped from the tree, and in another moment was holding the fronds apart and staring ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... unnoticed, of which an account was given in the Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects in 1887. These experiments were made on rectangular bodies with sections of propeller blade form, moved through the water at various velocities in straight lines, in directions oblique to their plane faces; and from their results an estimate was formed of the resistance of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various

... still in column, under short canvas (A). Suffren pursued, being to windward yet astern, with his fleet on a line of bearing; that is, the line on which the ships were ranged was not the same as the course which they were steering. This formation, (A), wherein the advance is oblique to the front, is very difficult to maintain. Wishing to make the action, whatever the immediate event, decisive in results, by drawing the French well to leeward of the port, Hughes, who was a thorough seaman and ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan

... grant, nor the confidence they expressed upon religious matters, could extort a kind word in favour of their religion. But this observation, whether meant as a reproach to him for his want of gracious feeling to a generous parliament, or as an oblique compliment to his sincerity, has no force in it. His majesty's speech was spoken immediately upon, passing the bills which the Speaker presented, and he could not therefore take notice of the Speaker's words unless he had spoken extempore; for the custom is not, nor I believe ever was, ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox

... with the lack of nationality of the former. It seems, also, that Mr. Clay's speech carries, in its internal characteristics, sufficient evidence of the natural forces which tended to make democracy a national power, and not a mere adjunct of State sovereignty, wherever the oblique influence of slavery was absent. For this reason, it has been taken as a convenient introduction to the topic which follows, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... changing fortune, when the King himself experienced such bitter vicissitudes of the fortune of war, his generalship was the astonishment of all the armies of Europe. How, always the more rapid and skilful, he managed to establish his lines against his opponents; how so often he outflanked in an oblique position the weakest wing of the enemy, forced it back, and put it to rout; how his cavalry, which, newly organized, had become the strongest in the world, dashed in fury upon the foe, broke their ranks, scattered their battalions: all this was celebrated ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... such as the ancients supposed Jupiter to have of the earth, and to copy which there are no terms in any language. The gradual diminution of objects, and the masses of light and shade are intelligible in oblique and common prospects. But here every thing wore a new appearance, and had a new effect. The face of the country had a mild and permanent verdure, to which Italy is a stranger. The variety of cultivation, and the accuracy with which property is divided, give the idea ever present to ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... this Helen was now indefinitely reflecting, and of the man with whom she had seen it first she perhaps thought a little. But those were oblique thoughts, and hardly worth the name. All the experiences and impressions of the day—Isabel's departure from home, the wedding, the grave face of the old minister, the silence of the dim room in the parsonage, Charlie's subsequent comments, the dinner a trois—all ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... straight thy track, or if oblique, Thou know'st not. Shadows thou dost strike, Embracing ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... Little Country, Clem returned, bearing breast-high a napkin-covered tray, from which towered twin pillars of glass, topped with fragrant leafage and pierced each by a yellow straw. This tray he placed upon the table beside the poems of Lord Byron, and the minister permitted himself an oblique look thereat, even though this involved deserting the eyes of his agreeable hostess. The ice in the glasses tinkled a brief phrase of music, the tops burgeoned with a luxuriant summer green, and the straws were of a sweetly pastoral suggestiveness. The ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... attitude is characteristic of sensuality. This attitude is marked by an inclination quite the reverse of the second; that is to say, away from the interlocutor. Naturally, in this attitude, as in the preceding one, the glance is oblique; the head being bent forward and backward, is here ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... to reach Broadstairs, owing to the direction of the gale, they pulled in an oblique direction, and, after narrowly escaping an upset more than once, gained Deal beach not far from Sandown Castle, where the ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... Ivins, and another gentleman in a plaid waistcoat would wink at Miss J'mima Ivins's friend; on which Miss Jemima Ivins's friend's young man exhibited symptoms of boiling over, and began to mutter about 'people's imperence,' and 'swells out o' luck;' and to intimate, in oblique terms, a vague intention of knocking somebody's head off; which he was only prevented from announcing more emphatically, by both Miss J'mima Ivins and her friend threatening to faint away on the spot ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... purpose, it cuts off the connection till then existing between it and the thread by which it has hitherto been suspended from the finger, and floats away into space. Very often it rises almost vertically, sometimes its course is nearly horizontal, and sometimes it is oblique. ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett

... Oblique Fracture of Tibia; with partial Separation of 6 Epiphysis of Upper End of Fibula; and Incomplete Fracture ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... shells four of these plates are riveted two by two; all the others are movable, and rest, like the pieces of an arch, against the fixed plates that form abutments. Each half lining is thus held by means of a central plate, b' (Fig. 10), with oblique edges, and which, being driven home by the top of the filter, binds the whole tightly together. All these plates, which are slightly notched at their upper part, rest on a small flange at the lower ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various

... to cross the waves in rough water, always try to cross them "quartering," i. e. at an oblique angle, but not at right angles. Crossing big waves at right angles {177} is difficult and apt to strain a canoe, and getting lengthwise between the waves is dangerous. Always have more weight aft than in the bow; but, when there is only one person in the canoe, it may be convenient to place a weight ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... was directed under the command of Nevitta, general of the cavalry, to advance through the midland parts of Rhaetia and Noricum. A similar division of troops, under the orders of Jovius and Jovinus, prepared to follow the oblique course of the highways, through the Alps, and the northern confines of Italy. The instructions to the generals were conceived with energy and precision: to hasten their march in close and compact columns, which, according to the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... so connected with the bolt head as not to share the rotation of the latter when the handle is turned down into the locking position. When the handle is turned up to unlock the bolt, the hammer is cammed slightly to the rear, by means of oblique bearings on the bolt and hammer, so as to withdraw the point of the striker within the face of the bolt. This oblique cam action also gives great power to the extractor at first starting the empty cartridge ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various



Words linked to "Oblique" :   nominative, ab, convergent, abdominal, catty-corner, bias, kitty-corner, diagonal, accusative case, divergent, external oblique muscle, accusative, catacorner, abdominal external oblique muscle, grammatical case, case, ablative, devious, indirect, obliquity, inclined, musculus obliquus externus abdominis, dative, possessive case, sideways, obliqueness, diverging, oblique case, possessive, vocative, nonparallel, oblique vein of the left atrium, crabwise, oblique angle, catercorner, oblique-angled, kitty-cornered, genitive, dative case, vocative case, oblique triangle, perpendicular, cater-cornered



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