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Oblique   /əblˈik/   Listen
Oblique

noun
1.
Any grammatical case other than the nominative.  Synonym: oblique case.
2.
A diagonally arranged abdominal muscle on either side of the torso.  Synonyms: abdominal external oblique muscle, external oblique muscle, musculus obliquus externus abdominis.



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"Oblique" Quotes from Famous Books



... from the child, and allegorizing the expression of scripture, that Christ is the true light of the world. Nor is the art, with which the figures are represented less admirable than the management of the light. The face of the child is skillfully hidden, by its oblique position, from the conviction that the features of a new-born infant are ill-adapted to please the eye; but that of the Virgin is warmly irradiated, and yet so disposed, that in bending with maternal fondness over her offspring, it exhibits exquisite beauty, without the harshness of deep shadows. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... will may hear the Staircase story told; All its blobs, splotches, facets,—what you will; The vague Nude, compassed murkily about With ravage of six long sad hundred stairs, Dizzily plunging with tumultuous glee! Whirling the stairdust, hazarding oblique, The moon safe in her pocket! See she treads Cool citric crystals, fierce pyropus stone; While crushing sunbeams in a triple line Smirk at the insane roses in her hair, And Strojavacca, frowning, looks asquint To see that trick of toe,—that ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells

... included by the term. By definition we distinguish triangles from squares, circles, and other plane figures. By division we may separate them into scalene, isosceles, and equilateral, or if we divide them according to a different principle into right and oblique triangles. In either case the division is complete and exact. By completeness is meant that every object denoted by the term explained is included in the division given, thus making the sum of these divisions equal to the whole. By exactness is meant that but a single principle ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... himself at a spot distant about sixty leagues from Tubac. The sun, inclining towards the west, was already darting oblique rays; it was the hour when the wind, although still hot, no longer seems to come out of the mouth of a furnace. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon, and light white clouds tinted with rose colour, indicated that the sun had run two-thirds of his course; ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... An oblique ray of moonlight struck through the window over his head, luring him like a song. He softly got up, and, gathering up his bed, ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... inorganic Nature, we may detect a dim and obscure prophecy of her ensuing process in the twigs and rude semblances that occur in crystallization of some of the copper ores, and in the well-known arbor Dianae, and arbor Veneris. These latter Ritter has already ably explained by considering the oblique branches and their acute angles as the result of magnetic repulsion, from the presentation of the same poles, &c. In the CORALS and CONCHYLIA, the whole act and purpose of their existence seems to be that of connecting the animal ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... he 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 Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... his Angels turn askance The poles of Earth twice ten degrees and more From the Sun's axle; they with labour pushed Oblique the centric globe: some say the Sun Was bid turn reins from the equinoctial road Like distant breadth—to Taurus with the seven Atlantic Sisters, and the Spartan Twins, Up to the Tropic Crab; thence down amain By Leo, and the Virgin, and the Scales, As deep as Capricorn; to ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... taking place in their position. The troops which on their left stretched far beyond Hougoumont, were now moved nearer to the centre. The attack upon the chateau seemed less vigorously supported, while the oblique direction of their right wing, which, pivoting upon Planchenoit, opposed a face to the Prussians,—all denoted a change in their order of battle. It was now the hour when Napoleon was at last convinced that nothing but the carnage he could no longer support could destroy the unyielding ranks ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... detested by all Europe,—for all Europe, in one way or another, was the victim of his crimes. He was detested as the absolute master of Spain, whose guides were perfidy, ambition, personal interest, views always oblique, often caprice, sometimes madness; and whose selfish desires, varied and diversified according to the fantasy of the moment, were hidden under schemes always uncertain and oftentimes impossible of execution. Accustomed to keep the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... The oblique band of sunlight which followed her through the door became the young wife well. It illuminated her as her presence illuminated the heath. In her movements, in her gaze, she reminded the beholder ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... this oblique compliment, but he felt well assured that Bob meant all for the best. After a short pause, he resumed ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... final summing-up—this quietly authoritative keynote into which all the clashing discords seem at length to be resolved—the poem, in most hands, would have closed. But Browning was too ingrained a believer in the "oblique" methods of Art to acquiesce in so simple and direct a conclusion; he loved to let truth struggle through devious and unlikely channels to the heart instead of missing its aim by being formally proclaimed or announced. ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... breathed vindictiveness and malignity. A singular action of his was that he always, in what must have been his arrogant vanity, turned his profile to those who watched him, and it was a remarkable one; it sloped in an oblique line from the top of his forehead to his protruding chin, resembling somewhat the carved bowl of his pipe, which was of flint and a famed inheritance from his ancestors. From it he took his name. One solitary eagle plume, its tip stained ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... has only been taught to please will soon find that her charms are oblique sunbeams, and that they cannot have much effect on her husband's heart when they are seen every day, when the summer is past and gone. Will she then have sufficient native energy to look into herself for comfort, and cultivate her dormant faculties; or ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... their Newcastle shop, was fitted with a tubular boiler six feet long and three feet four inches in diameter. The fire-box was two feet wide and three feet high. On each side of the boiler at its rear end was an oblique cylinder, the piston-rods being connected with the outside of the two driving wheels, which were in front. The two rear wheels were about one-half the diameter of the drivers. The tender, also ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... 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 rocks we came across a ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... 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 ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... I had to leave Turkey, when I was obliged to quit my dangerous but adored lodgings in Stamboul, with all my busy and hurried preparations for departure there was mingled this strange regret: never more should I see the oblique ray of sunshine come into the stairway window and fall upon the niche in the wall where ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... seas Beyond the horizon: then from pole to pole He views in breadth, and without longer pause Down right into the world's first region throws His flight precipitant, and winds with ease Through the pure marble air his oblique way Amongst innumerable stars that shone Stars distant, but nigh hand seem'd other worlds; Or other worlds they ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... breeze is 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 ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... nothing of agriculture and to them salt and lombok are non-existent. Few of them survive. On the authority of missionaries there are some three hundred such savages at the headwaters of the Kahayan, who are described as very Mongolian in appearance, with oblique eyes and prominent cheekbones, ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... performed by an impulsion, of which we have very little notion; and according to Sir Isaac Newton, it is by an attraction, the cause of which is as much unknown to us. At Paris you imagine that the earth is shaped like a melon, or of an oblique figure; at London it has an oblate one. A Cartesian declares that light exists in the air; but a Newtonian asserts that it comes from the sun in six minutes and a half. The several operations of your chemistry are performed by acids, ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire

... here is the simplest that can be made. It is suggested that until the child becomes accustomed to working with the knife, all designs for grooving had better be confined to straight lines. Combine in a design a vertical, a horizontal, and an oblique line, and some beautiful patterns may ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw

... alike had facility in its playing. Pepe of Papara, and Tehau of Papeari, their eyes flashing, their bosoms rising and falling tumultuously, and their voices and bodies alternating in their expressions of passion, were joined by Temanu of Lovaina's, the oblique-eyed girl whom they called a half-Chinese, but whose ancestral tree, she said, showed no celestial branch. Temanu was tall, slender, serpent-like, her body flexuous and undulatory, responding to every quaver of the music. Her uncorseted figure, with only ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... object; the word "sermons" has to most men a repulsive sound, and a 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 ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... 120th meridian, and a point at that spot is called the State Line Point. The latitude parallel of this northern entrance is 39 deg. 15". The boundary line goes due south until about 38 deg. 58" and then strikes off at an oblique angle to the southeast, making the southern line close to Lakeside Park, a few miles east of ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... Goodward rallied; "such a perfect afternoon!" She gave him the oblique smile again, weighted this time with the knowledge of all that Peter hadn't been able or hadn't tried to keep from her. "It isn't easy, is it," she went on addressing her speech to whatever, at the mention of her daughter's name, hung in the air between them, "to stand by and ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... perpendicular direction, or in supporting it upon the earth, as 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 sole of its foot flat down upon a level surface. ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... deserve mention on account of their singularity of form, we may note those of Dilophospora graminis, which are straight, and have two or three hair-like appendages at each extremity. In Discosia there is a single oblique bristle at each end, or at the side of the septate spores, whilst in Neottiospora a tuft of delicate hairs is found at one extremity only. The appendages in Dinemasporium are similar to those of Discosia. The ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... 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

... d'etre, entierement composee de nuances, was not more, as the writer seems to have supposed, than attributory to Mr. Brummell's art. Nor is it even peculiar to dandies. All delicate spirits, to whatever art they turn, even if they turn to no art, assume an oblique attitude towards life. Of all dandies, Mr. Brummell did most steadfastly maintain this attitude. Like the single-minded artist that he was, he turned full and square towards his art and looked life straight in the face out of the ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... 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

... in the evening the play had just begun. The scene was the interior of the Temple at Jerusalem, rather well done,—two ranges of superimposed porphyry columns with a good effect of oblique perspective, which is very common in the Spanish theatres. St. Simeon, in a dress suspiciously resembling that of the modern bishop, was talking with a fiery young Hebrew who turns out to be Demas, the Penitent Thief, ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... 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

... 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, and ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper

... vast plain, more direful still beneath the pallid light of the oblique moonbeams. The olive and almond trees showed like grey spots amid the chaos of rocks spreading to the sombre row of hills on the horizon. There were big splotches of gloom, bumpy ridges, blood-hued earthy pools in which red stars ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... This is the presence in close proximity to the nerve of the Ligament of the Pad (Percival), or the Ligament of the Ergot (McFadyean). This is a subcutaneous glistening cord originating in the ergot of the fetlock, passing in an oblique direction downwards and forwards, and crossing over on its way both the digital artery and the posterior branch of ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... 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 ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... as Mongoloid, are now regarded as an aberrant variety of the American race, owing to their narrow headform and linguistic affinity; though in Alaska even their headform closely approximates the Mongoloid Siberian type.[754] But in stature, color, oblique eyes, broad flat face, and high cheek bones, in his temperament and character, artistic productions and some aspects of his culture, he groups with the Asiatic Hyperboreans across the narrow sixty miles of water forming ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... 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 these mingled in her ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... her. Oblique angles had become irritatingly fascinating. "I'm beginning to think so more and more," ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... position of the sun affects temperature, rather than its distance. In winter the earth is three millions of miles nearer the sun than in summer, but the oblique rays of the former season reach us in less quantity than the more direct The distribution of land and water, the nature of the soil, the indentation of bays, the elevation of land above the sea-level, insularity, etc., all, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... B will have occupied a position slightly to the left. If distance perpendicularly above A'C' is conceived to represent time previous to M, the corresponding previous positions of the sectors will be represented by the oblique bands of the figure. The narrow bands (GG, GG) are the loci of the successive positions of the green sector; the broader bands (RR, RR), of the ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... had only come home half an hour sooner," she cried as she fought her oblique way up a ridge she must top, "I could have laughed at them. God be with me and I'll ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... subscriptions to be raised from "persons eminent in Arts and Literature," who, it seems, were lured by the seductive promise, that, "if they had been virtuous or penitents, they should be commemorated;" an oblique hint at a panegyrical puff. In the decline of his popularity he permitted his door-keeper, whom he dignifies with the title of Ostiary, to take a shilling! But he seems to have been popular for many years; even when his auditors were but few, they were ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... would turn up at a fashionable resort greatly affected by Washingtonians and only a comparatively short distance from the capital. He was at a great disadvantage in not knowing Armitage's plans and strategy; his own mind was curiously cunning, and his reasoning powers traversed oblique lines. He was thus prone to impute similar mental processes to other people; simplicity and directness he did not understand at all. He had underrated Armitage's courage and daring; he wished to ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... 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 face of ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... their matins. Each moment, flights push from the tower, and join the aerial choir hovering overhead, while their places below are supplied by darting myriads. But down through all this discord of commotion, I hear clear, silver, bugle-like notes unbrokenly falling, like oblique lines of swift-slanting rain in a cascading shower. I gaze far up, and behold a snow-white angelic thing, with one long, lance-like feather thrust out behind. It is the bright, inspiriting chanticleer of ocean, the beauteous bird, from its bestirring whistle of musical invocation, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... dulness entirely into the shade. Had not Griffin and his associates been implicated in the affair, it is probable the vice-governatore and the podesta would have been still more obnoxious to censure; but as things were, the sly looks, open jests, and oblique innuendoes of all they met in the ship, had determined the honest magistrates to retire to their proper pursuits on terra firma, at the earliest occasion. In the mean time, to escape persecution, and to obtain a modicum of the glory that was ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... them, announced their approach, and when a gale of wind separated the clouds, glittering weapons and brilliant dresses dazzled the eye. Such was the appearance of the Caravan to a man who was riding up towards it in an oblique direction. He was mounted on a fine Arabian courser, covered with a tiger-skin; silver bells were suspended from the deep-red stripe work, and on the head of the horse waved a plume of heron feathers. The rider was of majestic mien, and his ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff

... poets. There is also a break or caesura which in five-syllable verses falls after the second syllable and in seven-syllable verses after the fourth. The Chinese also make use of two kinds of tone in their poetry, the Ping or even, and the Tsze or oblique. ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng

... large ivory buttons, such as are commonly worn by cabmen and other tap-room blackguards. His countenance was by far too dark and sinister-looking to be honest, and, as he occasionally favoured us with a few oblique and professional glances from beneath a white castor, half-pulled over his brow, it instinctively, as it were, reminded us of "my lord—the ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown

... sweetness; the skin, of a brownish tint, but exquisitely delicate, would entitle her to be considered a very handsome woman, even in France, if the outline of her face and the arrangement of her features—the oblique eyes, the prominent cheek-bones—had ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... (34), is not very differently worked from A or B. It is much more open, and the first row of horizontal stitches is crossed by two opposite rows of oblique stitches, which ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day

... say 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 ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... more oblique than in the eight-year-old and nine-year-old mouth. The table surfaces of the inferior nippers are decidedly rounded, the cups are small, triangular and situated well toward the posterior borders. The dark brown streak or dental star is situated in the central portion of the nippers ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... trees stuck in the ground, and bound together on the top with withies, and such other things as we could get; the creek was our defence on the north, a little brook on the west, and the south and east sides were fortified with a bank, which entirely covered our huts; and being drawn oblique from the north-west to the south-east, made our city a triangle. Behind the bank or line our huts stood, having three other huts behind them at a good distance. In one of these, which was a little one, and stood further off, ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe

... 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

... 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 persistence ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... floor was thick with dust, and a remarkable array of miscellaneous objects was shrouded in the same grey covering. Then I perceived, standing strange and gaunt in the centre of the hall, what was clearly the lower part of a huge skeleton. I recognized by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature after the fashion of the Megatherium. The skull and the upper bones lay beside it in the thick dust, and in one place, where rain-water had dropped through a leak in the roof, the thing itself had been worn away. Further in the gallery was the ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... pronouncing itself in the well-resolved work of every age; you will see the firmly traced and irrevocable incision determining not only the forms, but, in great part, the moral temper, of all vitally progressive art; you will trace the same principle and power in the furrows which the oblique sun shows on the granite of his own Egyptian city,—in the white scratch of the stylus through the colour on a Greek vase—in the first delineation, on the wet wall, of the groups of an Italian fresco; in the unerring and unalterable touch ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... 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 boy at his simplest appeared to be winking the information that ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... way my angle of view was changed. The field too was smaller. The end of the table, the tray and the swivel-chair I had right under my eyes. The captain had not come back yet. The piano I could not see now; but on the other hand I had a very oblique downward view of the curtains drawn across the cabin and cutting off the forward part of it just about the level of the skylight-end and only an inch or so from the end of the table. They were heavy stuff, travelling on a thick brass rod with some contrivance to ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... not arise from the sun's nearness, but from the height and density of the atmosphere, as appears from the cold on high mountains even in hot climates; also that heat is varied according to the direct or oblique incidence of the sun's rays, as is plain from the seasons of winter and summer in every region.' It is curious to find thus advanced, in a sort of lecture addressed to visionary Mercurials, a theory ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... Pectoralis minor. depresses point of shoulder, Latissimus dorsi. draws arm downwards and backwards. Serratus magnus. assists in raising ribs. Trapezius. Rhomboideus. backward movements of head and shoulder, Intercostals. raise and depress the ribs. External oblique. /various forward movements Internal oblique. of trunk Rectus abdominis. compresses abdominal ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... head; was barely large enough to squeeze through, and there was no way by which I could climb up to it. I observed, however, that adjoining the hole there was a huge marble pillar running upward and outward in an oblique slant, and wedged in its position by several other massive stones, but with its end protruding below the rest. So, without wasting any time, I leaped up and caught hold of it with both hands, and then, adopting the tactics of a gymnast, I began slowly working ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... account, but about which plain men like to ask, namely: Where did the sun come from? What melted it down into a fluid state, fit to be splashed about? Where did the comet come from? And who threw it with so correct an aim through infinite space as exactly to hit the sun in an oblique direction. Creation, it seems, was nearly missed, after all. This chaotic theory never gained much respect from men of science, though its simplicity speedily opened its way among the vulgar, and it has ever been a favorite with ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... except he relates simple facts; as, "I was at Richmond:" or what depends on mensuration; as, "I am six feet high." He is sure he has been at Richmond; he is sure he is six feet high: but he cannot be sure he is wise, or that he has any other excellence. Then, all censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to shew how much he can spare. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the reproach of falsehood.' BOSWELL. 'Sometimes it may proceed from a man's strong consciousness of his faults being ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... represents at a Distance the Shape of an Owl, to intimate the Country of the Statuary, who, in all probability, was an Athenian. This kind of Wit was very much in Vogue among our own Countrymen about an Age or two ago, who did not practise it for any oblique Reason, as the Ancients abovementioned, but purely for the sake of being Witty. Among innumerable Instances that may be given of this Nature, I shall produce the Device of one Mr Newberry, as I find it mentioned by our learned ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... and outraged every sacred instinct of humanity by calling the lust for flesh, alive or dead, love, but he has celebrated her ghoulish passion as if he would perforce make of her an object of that "redemption" of which, again following Wagner but along oblique paths, he prates so strangely in his opera ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... 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

... intimidated by this boisterous threat, she admitted him without hesitation, and, with a shrillness of voice peculiar to herself, began to hold forth upon her own innocence and his unjust suspicion, mingling in her harangue sundry oblique hints against her mother-in-law, importing, that some people were so viciously inclined by their own natures, that she did not wonder at their doubting the virtue of other people; but that these people ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... masters of all moods, it is the grave, rather than the humorous mood, which he chooses for commendation. He was a devout Shakespearian, but it is difficult to recall an allusion to Shakespeare's humour, except in the rather oblique form of Dogberry as the type of German officialdom. Swift he quoted with admirable effect, but it was Swift the reviler, not Swift the jester. He says that he made a "wooden Oxford audience laugh aloud with two pages of Heine's wit"; but the lecture, as we read ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... shade, the cheeks hollow up to the inner angle of the eye, the projecting cheek-bones, the massive, protuberant jaw, the sinuous, mobile lips, pressed together as if attentive, the large, clear eyes, deeply sunk under the broad, arched eyebrows, the fixed, oblique look, as penetrating as a rapier, and the two creases which extend from the base of the nose to the brow, as if in a frown of suppressed anger and determined will. Add to this the accounts of his contemporaries[1135] who saw or heard the curt accent or the sharp, abrupt gesture, the interrogating, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... the angel and the answer of the virgin are almost identical with the words in St. Luke's Gospel; Justin, however, putting his account into the oblique narrative. ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler

... her a look of constantly growing nervousness, his mouth pulled to an oblique, his ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... of his independence. He had long since given up plug and fine-cut and taken to fat Havanas, which he smoked audibly, in plethoric wheezes. Good living had left his body stout and his breathing slightly asthmatic. He sat looking down at his massive knees; his oblique study of Copeland, apparently, had yielded him scant satisfaction. Copeland, in fact, was making paper fans out of the official note-paper in front ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer

... non-Italians he was grossly fulsome; people like Duke Cosimo of Florence he treated very differently. He praised the beauty of the then youthful prince, who in fact did share this quality with Augustus in no ordinary degree; he praised his moral conduct, with an oblique reference to the financial pursuits of Cosimo's mother, Maria Salviati, and concluded with a mendicant whine about the bad times and so forth. When Cosimo pensioned him, which he did liberally, considering ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... had looked in a day or two after the dinner, laid down her crochet-work and turned abruptly from her oblique survey of ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... By some oblique and unsuspected way, the words brought a certain comfort to Rose. Without bitterness, she remembered that Allison had once said: "In any true mating, they both know." Over and over again she said to herself, ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... sooth their limbs with ease; When all the weary sons of woe restrain Their yielding cares with slumber's silken chain, Solace sad grief, and lull reluctant pain. And while the sun, ne'er covetous of rest, Flies with such rapid speed from east to west, In tracks oblique he thro' the zodiac rolls, Between the northern and the southern poles; From which revolving progress thro' the skies. The needful seasons of the year arise: And as he now advances, now retreats, Whence winter colds proceed, and summer heats, He qualifies, and chears the air ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... author is a little more disposed to yield to criticism than his foregoers; he does not insist on texts and readings which the greatest editors have rejected. And he writes with courtesy, both direct and oblique, towards his antagonists; which, on his side of this subject, is like letting in fresh air. So that I suspect the two books will together make a tolerably good introduction to the subject for those who cannot go deep. Mr. Bickersteth's ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... some idea of the interior, we shall describe the cabin of Mr Stevenson. It measured four feet three inches in breadth on the floor, and though, from the oblique direction of the beams of the beacon, it widened towards the top, yet it did not admit of the full extension of the occupant's arms when he stood on the floor. Its length was little more than sufficient to admit of a cot-bed ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne

... sympathy with their unexampled triumph, had again swelled their ranks—and would probably act with the force of a vortex to draw in their simple countrymen from the Caspian. The question, therefore, of pre-occupation was reduced to a race. The Cossacks were marching upon an oblique line not above fifty miles longer than that which led to the same point from the Kalmuck head-quarters before Koulagina: and therefore without the most furious haste on the part of the Kalmucks, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... would be swept by 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 face ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... by which his senses were bound, I concluded, contrary to my first design, to wait his departure, and allow myself to be conducted whithersoever he pleased. The track into which he now led me was different from the former one. It was a maze, oblique, circuitous, upward and downward, in a degree which only could take place in a region so remarkably irregular in surface, so abounding with hillocks and steeps and pits and brooks, as Solesbury. It seemed ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... been inconsistent with the praise bestowed upon her—that she had an unaffected mind. This couplet is further objectionable, because the sense of love and peaceful admiration which such a character naturally inspires, is disturbed by an oblique and ill-timed stroke of satire. She is not praised so much as others are blamed, and is degraded by the Author in thus being made a covert or stalking-horse for gratifying a propensity the most abhorrent from her own nature—'Passion and pride were to her soul unknown.' It cannot be ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... With that oblique persuasion, Anita took up the jacket, and her quick fingers made the needles fly. Her glance was keen, and although apparently concentrated on her work, she saw the strange mixture of plainness and luxury in the ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell

... cleavage. Rocksalt cleaves in three directions, and the resulting solid is this perfect cube, which may be broken up into any number of smaller cubes. Iceland spar also cleaves in three directions, not at right angles, but oblique to each other, the resulting solid being a rhomboid. In each of these cases the mass cleaves with equal facility in all three directions. For the sake of completeness I may say that many crystals cleave with unequal facility in different directions: heavy spar presents an example ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... [p.230]standing in an oblique direction towards it, are four large Corinthian Columns, equalling in beauty of execution the finest of those at Baalbec or Palmyra (those in the temple of the Sun at the latter place excepted): they are quite perfect, are six spans in ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... clean-cut face there sat a certain arrogance, as of one at least desirous of having his own way in his own sphere. Not an ill-looking man, upon the whole, was Henry Decherd, though his reddish-yellow eyes, a bit oblique in their setting, gave the impression alike of a certain touchiness of temper and an unpleasantly fox-like quality of character. There was an air not barren of self-consciousness as he threw himself out of the saddle, for ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... but fair she certainly is not in our eyes. She competes with the man in dirt. Like the man she is small of stature, has black coarse hair resembling that of a horse's mane or tail, face of a yellow colour, often concealed by dirt, small, oblique, often running and sore eyes, a flat nose, broad projecting cheekbones, slender legs ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... a time, after an oblique valley had cleft the range, an elm-hedge ran along the crest, till there looked down a grey church with a squinting spire and grey-black yews set about it, and something white like a monument standing up on a mound beside it. Woods appeared and receded, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... eagerness to join the nearest group; an oratorical cheesemonger, with a piece of cheese in one hand and a knife in the other, was incautiously making notes of his emphatic pauses on that excellent specimen of marzolino; and elderly market-women, with their egg-baskets in a dangerously oblique position, contributed ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... outskirts of Berlin, will suffice to mark his temper in that respect. It was in the spring of 1719; our little Fritz then six years old, who of course heard much temporary confused commentary, direct and oblique, triumphant male laughter, and perhaps rebellious female sighs, on ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle

... clutched at a lie in order to extricate himself as quickly as possible and at any price, it is no wonder that he looks back with a shudder. When the disease has been driven inward by throwing in abundant doses of Paley, Butler, with perhaps an oblique reference to preferment and respectability, it continues to give many severe twinges, and perhaps it may permanently injure the constitution. But, if it has been allowed to run its natural course, and the sufferer has ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... compared to the solemn repose of the great tree. In front of these are figures cut roughly out of logs, short-legged, with long bodies and exaggeratedly long faces; often they are nothing but a head, with the same smiling mouth, a long nose and narrow, oblique eyes. They are painted red, white and blue, and are hardly discernible in the dimness. On their forked heads they carry giant birds with outstretched wings,—herons,—floating as if they had just dropped through the branches ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... directed by McCook to form line of battle and place my artillery in position so that I could act in concert with Davis's division, which he wished to post on my right in the general line he desired to take up. In obedience to these directions I deployed on the right of, and oblique to the Wilkinson pike, with a front of four regiments, a second line of four regiments within short supporting distance, and a reserve of one brigade in column of regiments to the rear of my centre. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... 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 rocks; and singing ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... their leaves so early as almost to hide the flowers. The flowers differ in size and colour, and in one case in structure also, that of the St. Valery apple having a double calyx with ten divisions, and fourteen styles with oblique stigmas, but without stamens or corolla. The flowers, therefore, have to be fertilised with the pollen from other varieties in order to produce fruit. The pips or seeds differ also in shape, size, and colour; some varieties ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... one of Crewe's cigars, and very much mystified by the whole proceedings, though he would not have admitted it on any account. "At this point we practically lose sight of the window altogether, except for an oblique glimpse. Certainly Kemp would not come as far back as this—he would have ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... historic reading; and he understood the value of a plan, and the danger of sticking to it, and the advantage of a big army for flanking; and he manoeuvred a small one cunningly to make it a bolt at the telling instant. Dartrey Fenellan had explained to him Frederick's oblique attack, Napoleon's employment of the artillery arm preparatory to the hurling of the cataract on the spot of weakness, Wellington's parallel march with Marmont up to the hour of the decisive cut through the latter at Salamanca; and Skepsey treated his enemy ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... even to dwell on the stories of the forest scenery that spread themselves out beyond the level front of the hollow; being just now bound to tell a story of life at a stage when the blissful beauty of earth and sky entered only by narrow and oblique inlets into the consciousness, which was busy with a small social drama almost as little penetrated by a feeling of wider relations as if it had been a puppet-show. It will be understood that the food and champagne were of the best—the talk and laughter too, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... intelligent, while the form of the whole head indicates the possession of considerable mental capabilities. But such is not the case with the Tchuelches in whose veins is a mixture of Fuegian or Araucanian blood. Of these latter the flat noses, oblique eyes, and badly proportioned figures excite disgust, and they are as different from a pure-bred Tchuelche as a racer is from an ordinary cart-horse. Their long coarse hair is worn parted in the middle, and is prevented from falling over their faces by ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... for the yacht was most apparent; and the "Smith" not beyond a reasonable guess before the revelation. Yet to the eye of Goodwin, who had seen several things, there was a discrepancy between Smith and his yacht. A bullet-headed man Smith was, with an oblique, dead eye and the moustache of a cocktail-mixer. And unless he had shifted costumes before putting off for shore he had affronted the deck of his correct vessel clad in a pearl-gray derby, a gay plaid suit and ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... that seemed to rend her and then pulled herself up and sat silent. But he could see, from her shadowy outline through his oblique vision, that she ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... inferred that the "Niagara" had then been carried as close as five hundred to six hundred yards to the British line, but it would appear also towards its rear; rather, probably, that the British had advanced relatively to her, owing to her course being oblique to theirs. ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... moulded features, contrasts very strongly with the negro, with his black skin, long head, with flat, narrow forehead, thick lips, projecting jaw, broad nose, and black and woolly hair. The Chinese, with his yellow skin, flat nose, black, coarse hair, and oblique, almond-shaped eyes, and round skull, marks another distinct racial type. Other great races have different characteristics, and among our own race we find a further separation into two great types, the blonds and ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... day, now exhibited great delight. "I told you," said he, "that Clairfait would turn out well. I see that he has been taught in our school. Observe that manoeuvre;" he continued his comment with increasing force of gesture—"That was the Great Frederic's favourite, the oblique formation. The finest invention in tactics, with that he gained Rosbach, and beat the French and Austrians; with that he gained the battle of Breslau; and with that he gained the grand fight of Torgau, and finished the war. Yet the king ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... flight of about a hundred yards, rising and falling in a most graceful manner. At a little distance they exactly resemble swallows, and no one who sees them can doubt that they really do fly, not merely descend in an oblique direction from the height they gain by their first spring. In the evening an aquatic bird, a species of booby (Sula fiber.) rested on our hen-coop, and was caught by the neck ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... Flag description: five oblique bands of blue (hoist side), yellow, red, white, and green (bottom) radiating from the bottom of ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... but one eye; as proposed in Class I. 2. 5. 4. Dr. Sommering has shewn, that a true decussation of the optic nerves in the human subject actually exists, Elem. of Physiology by Blumenbach, translated by C. Caldwell, Philadelphia. This further appears probable from the oblique direction and insertion of each optic nerve, into the side of the eye next to the nose, in a direct line from the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... continue their advance, while the supports and reserves fell as quickly as they could into the formation that is roughly indicated in the accompanying diagram. That plan had been adopted to guard against flank attacks by the oblique fire from two companies, between which an opening was left for the assaulting companies to retire through in case of reverses. But neither flank attack nor reverses came at this critical point. Major ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... heads more toward the shore, so that the spot where the lines would meet would be close to the shore itself. The canoes were now within two hundred yards of each other. The Indians were nearer to the shore, but the oblique line that they were following would give them about an equal distance to row to the point for which both were making. Harold could not see that there was the slightest difference in the rate at which they were traveling. It seemed to him that the four canoes would ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty

... Duke, as he took one of the bottles, and scrutinised the cork with a very keen eye; "we are no bigots, and there are moments when we drink Champagne, nor is Burgundy forgotten, nor the soft Bourdeaux, nor the glowing grape of the sunny Rhone!" His Highness held the bottle at an oblique angle with the chandelier. The wire is loosened, whirr! The exploded cork whizzed through the air, extinguished one of the burners of the chandelier, and brought the cut drop which was suspended under it rattling ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... through the narrow entry, and so had stept first into the parlour)—this Tristram of ours, I find, comes very hardly by all his religious rites.—Never was the son of Jew, Christian, Turk, or Infidel initiated into them in so oblique and slovenly a manner.—But he is no worse, I trust, said Yorick.—There has been certainly, continued my father, the deuce and all to do in some part or other of the ecliptic, when this offspring of mine was formed.—That, you are a better judge of than I, replied Yorick.—Astrologers, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... the distinction between the infinitive and indicative;" a point upon which "any fairly trained schoolboy" would decide against my reasoning. I had found fault with Tischendorf in the text, and with Dr. Westcott in a note, for inserting the words "say they," and "they taught," in rendering the oblique construction of a passage whose source is in dispute, without some mark or explanation, in the total absence of the original, that these special words were supplementary and introduced by the translator. I shall speak of Tischendorf presently, and for the moment I confine myself ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels

... Colonel Grinell took oblique cognizance of the question, "you've just made, by implication, a most grave charge against my department. If you're not mistaken in what you've just said, I ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr



Words linked to "Oblique" :   ab, grammatical case, accusative case, objective case, crabwise, kitty-cornered, cata-cornered, divergent, accusative, sideways, abdominal muscle, perpendicular, convergent, kitty-corner, ablative, vocative case, inclined, diagonal, diverging, possessive case, genitive case, catty-corner, obliquity, cater-cornered, oblique-angled, possessive, bias, case, nominative, nonparallel, parallel, catercorner, vocative, dative case, genitive, catty-cornered, abdominal, dative, catacorner, indirect, ablative case



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