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Oblique   /əblˈik/   Listen
Oblique

adjective
(Written also oblike)
1.
Slanting or inclined in direction or course or position--neither parallel nor perpendicular nor right-angled.  "Acute and obtuse angles are oblique angles" , "The axis of an oblique cone is not perpendicular to its base"
2.
Indirect in departing from the accepted or proper way; misleading.  Synonym: devious.  "Gave oblique answers to direct questions" , "Oblique political maneuvers"



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"Oblique" Quotes from Famous Books



... are, perhaps, 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; and those who care to make the weary ascent of one of the Crystal Palace towers, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock

... the notched stick is held firmly in the left hand, while with the right hand a nail or match stick is rubbed along the notched edge, at the same time pressing with the thumb or finger of the moving hand against the oblique face of the stick. The direction of rotation depends upon which face is pressed. A square stick with notches on edge is best, but the section may be circular or even irregular in shape. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... in those Japanese refugees, displayed the usual characteristics of skill in boat-building and navigation, together with that accurate observation of natural phenomena which alone could compensate for the lack of scientific knowledge. The women, with oblique eyes and oval faces, wear the gay sarong and white kabaja customary in Eastern Java. The men, in shapeless gowns and wide trousers, with broad hats of battered straw on their close-cropped hair, afford a sorry spectacle of unbecoming ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... M. Hutchinson, of the British Army, already described in this book as an instructor who made a powerful impression on the American Army in World War I because of his droll wit, was a master hand at taking the oblique approach to teach a lesson. Old officers still remember the manner and the moral of passages ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... such doubts merely as a proof that 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 ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the neighbouring wood. 'Twas night, and, covered in the foliage deep, Jove plunged my senses in the death of sleep. All night I slept, oblivious of my pain: Aurora dawned and Phoebus shined in vain, Nor, till oblique he sloped his evening ray, Had Somnus dried the balmy dews away. Then female voices from the shore I heard: A maid amidst them, goddess-like appear'd; To her I sued, she pitied my distress; Like thee in beauty, nor in virtue less. Who from such youth could hope considerate care? In ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... being lost. From Apollonius's prefaces we can judge of the relation of his work to Euclid's Conics, the content of which answered to the first three Books of Apollonius. Although Euclid knew that an ellipse could be otherwise produced, e. g. as an oblique section of a right cylinder, there is no doubt that he produced all three conics from right cones like his predecessors. Apollonius, however, obtains them in the most general way by cutting any oblique cone, and his original axes of reference, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... is shown 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 diagonally (generally ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham

... for the buyer, and considered the other man's interests before he did his own. He practised the Golden Rule and made it pay, while the most of us yet regard it as a kind of interesting experiment. I have said a few oblique things about city-bred boys and city people in general, but I feel like apologizing for them and doing penance when I think of restless, tireless, eager, brave, honest and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... saw their line wavering in one direction, carries round some troops to the left wing, where he saw a crowd of the enemy collected, and gave to those who were on the mountain the signal which had been agreed on. When a new shout arose from that quarter also, and they seemed to make their way in an oblique direction, down the mountain to the camp of the Gauls; then through fear lest they should be cut off from it, the fight was given up, and they were carried towards the camp with precipitate speed. Where ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... said, giving him one of those sly oblique glances with which women question so maliciously the men they are trying ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... beam of sunlight, admitted through a half-inch hole, put the mirror at an oblique angle; you can arrange it so as to throw half a dozen bright spots on ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren

... a large lot of pence issues, purchased by us lately, we have found two copies of the 3d. on greyish wove paper, perforated 13, with oblique parallel cuts. This seems to confirm the theory that the pence issues of Canada were not perforated by the manufacturers, but either by the Canadian Government, or by some persons authorized by them, who most ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole

... mire; the other had stuck in the marshy ground near Schonermark, and he had replaced it by a heavy wooden shoe, such as those worn by German peasants; his right arm was in a linen bandage, flecked with blood, and an oblique wound, covered with a broad black plaster, was on his forehead. Such was the miserable condition in which the nephew of Frederick the Great appeared in the brilliant halls of the royal palace of Prussia before ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... substance but is made up of many primary constituents. The question can therefore be more precisely stated thus: How does it come about that in so many cases the useful variations present themselves in numbers just where they are required, the white oblique lines in the leaf-caterpillar on the under surface of the body, the accompanying coloured stripes just above them? And, further, how has it come about that in grass caterpillars, not oblique but longitudinal stripes, which are more effective for concealment among grass ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... comely Faun, as you would speak To tree, or zephyr, or untrodden grass. Have you, O Greek, O mocker of old days, Have you not sometimes with that oblique eye Winked at the Farnese Hercules?—Alone, Have you, O Faun, considerately turned From side to side when counsel-seekers came, And now advised as shepherd, now as satyr?— Have you sometimes, upon this very bench, Seen, at mid-day, Vincent de Paul instilling Grace into Gondi?—Have you ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... in Colombo. I had always understood that the pengolin was unable to climb trees; but the one last mentioned frequently ascended a tree in my garden, in search of ants; and this it effected by means of its hooked feet, aided by an oblique grasp of the tail. The ants it seized by extending its round and glutinous tongue along their tracks; and in the stomach of one which was opened after death, I found a quantity of small stones and gravel, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... the stairs 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

... photography for the demonstration of the object the study is difficult. The presence of objects still smaller than 0.1 m. can be detected in a fluid by the use of the dark field illumination and the ultra-microscope, the principle of which is the direction of a powerful oblique ray of light into the field of the microscope. The objects are not visible as such, but the dispersion of the light ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... Wolf, God of the East, and of his younger brothers (Iu-na-wi-ko we-ma-we) are represented on Plate VII. They are characterized by erect attitudes, usually oblique faces, ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing

... elderly man," returned Richard, not relishing this oblique criticism of his own simpler method. "What would be proper in his case would be considered cowardly in mine. It was my duty to discharge the fellow, and not let him dispute my authority. I ought to have been cooler, of course. But I should have ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... give a wild animal. 2. Reverse part of a bridge, and give part of a city. 3. Reverse a swallow, and give a stopple. 4. Reverse to praise, and give consisting of two. 5. Reverse an oblique view, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various

... thy exaltation is? Here's no ecliptic threatens thee with night, Although the wiser few take in thy light. They are not at that glorious pitch, to be In a conjunction with divinity. Could we partake some oblique ray of thine, Salute thee in a sextile, or a trine, It were enough; but thou art flown so high, The telescope is turn'd a common eye. Had the grave Chaldee liv'd thy book to see, He had known no astrology but thee; Nay, more—for I believe't—thou shouldst have been Tutor to all his ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... reached, profoundly interested all scientific men. Faraday had been frequently puzzled by the deportment of bismuth, a highly crystalline metal. Sometimes elongated masses of the substance refused to set equatorially, sometimes they set persistently oblique, and sometimes even, like a magnetic body, from ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall

... something 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 on ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, 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 above-mentioned, 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 Camden ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... she tried to think what she should say when the girl appeared; but she had never been more conscious of her inability to deal with the oblique and the tortuous. She had lacked the hard teachings of experience, and an instinctive disdain for whatever was less clear and open than her own conscience had kept her from learning anything of the intricacies and contradictions of other hearts. She said to herself: "I must find out——" ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... wavered a little at the oblique reference to the couple of trouncings our Space Navy had administered to z'Srauff ships in the past. "We will be in the same place again times with no number," the alien replied. "I have hope for you that time you are in this place will be long and will ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire

... me this sunbeam, as o'er the moss bank green It glides, and enters swiftly the foliage dark between; Resting its golden lever, of mystic length and line, Upon the dewy herbage, in an oblique decline: Toward its moving column the stamen of the flowers Whirl, as by strong attraction; and through the daylight hours Gay insects, azure atoms, with every-colored wing, Swim 'mid the light, still lending fresh ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... no mistake. He beckoned to Big Bob Jeffries to try for goal. It was an oblique slant, and only a clever kicker could succeed, with that baffling wind against him. Big Bob looked once in the direction of the grandstand as if to draw inspiration. Most people believed he must know some girl, whose ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... with pointed beards, oblique eyes, and oblong shields, had to represent the Israelites; they marched by in an endless procession. He saw the blue-green of the vineyards on the hillside, the shadow of the dusty palm-trees upon the ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... flesh-colored nose, and long, thin ears. The neck should be broad, deep, and muscular, sloping in a graceful line from the shoulder to the head. The chest should be wide, deep, projecting, but level in front. The shoulders should be oblique, the blades well set in towards the ribs. The forelegs should be stout, muscular above the knee, and slender below it; the hind legs should be slender to the hock, and from thence increase in thickness to the buttocks, which should be ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... Society attached great value to the idea thus casually suggested, and Dr. Hooke was appointed to put it to the test of experiment. Being thus led to consider the subject more attentively, he wrote to Newton that wherever the direction of gravity was oblique to the axis on which the earth revolved, that is, in every part of the earth except the equator, falling bodies should approach to the equator, and the deviation from the vertical, in place of being exactly to the east, as Newton maintained, should be to the southeast ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... This oblique retort seldom failed. Lady Bassett would look at her husband, and her face would clear; and she would generally end by giving Mary a collar, or a scarf, ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... Solution,—institutional work. After all, in the rescuing of bodies some method might yet be discovered to revive the souls. And there were the children! Hodder might have been likened to an explorer, seeking a direct path when there was none—a royal road. And if this were oblique it offered, at least, a definite outlet ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... manuscripts; ramis crassis rigidis angulatis leviter pubescentibus, phyllodiis oblongo-lanceolatis mucronatis oblique binerviis viscido-punctatis basi obsolete glandulosis, capitulis 1-2 axillaribus, pedunculis lanatis, bracteolis rigidis acutis pubescentibus ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... hour the current hurried along the block of ice which bore Michael and Nadia. They feared every moment that it would give way beneath them. Swept along in the middle of the current, it was unnecessary to give it an oblique direction until they drew near the quays of Irkutsk. Michael, his teeth tight set, his ear on the strain, did not utter a word. Never had he been so near his object. He felt that he ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... us that the sun does not move in exactly the same course as the stars, and yet not in one which is opposed to them, but by revolving in an inclined and oblique orbit performs an easy and excellent circuit through them all, by which means everything is kept in its place, and its elements combined in the most admirable manner. So too in political matters, the man who takes too high a tone, and opposes the popular will in ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... point practically at right angles to all objects in nature. Everything that can exist under the sun will come in one of these planes, and at some time in the day in each. The vertical, the horizontal, or some sort of an oblique between these two. If the sun is overhead exactly, the flat ground, the tops of trees and houses, will get the full amount of sunlight. The vertical planes, sides of houses, depths of foliage, etc., will get the least, ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

... under which they are dispersed among the public. Infidelity is served up in every shape that is likely to allure, surprise, or beguile the imagination; in a fable, a tale, a novel, a poem; in interspersed and broken hints, remote and oblique surmises; in books of travels, of philosophy, of natural history; in a word, in any form rather than the right one, that of a professed and regular disquisition. And because the coarse buffoonery and broad laugh of the old and rude adversaries of the Christian faith ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin

... is a wide arc of a circle whose lower extremity is connected with the corridor of the larva and whose upper extremity is prolonged in a straight line which ends at the surface with a perpendicular or slightly oblique incidence. The wide connecting arc enables the insect to tack about. When, starting from a position parallel with the axis of the tree, the Sirex has passed gradually to a transversal position, he completes his course in a straight line, which ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... way along the black ridge of juicy peat, to where, in an oblique cutting running out from the main drain, a dozen men were at work, with their sharp spades cutting out great square bricks of peat, and clearing away the accumulations of hundreds of years from the sides of what at first appeared to be an enormous trunk of a tree, but which, upon closer ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... thinks I. A Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port; tombstones staring at me in the whalemen's chapel; and here a gallows! and a pair of prodigious black pots too! Are these last throwing out oblique hints touching tophet? I was called from these reflections by the sight of a freckled woman with yellow hair and a yellow gown, standing in the porch of the inn, under a dull red lamp swinging there, that looked much like an injured eye, and carrying on ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... she had her living to earn. She tried to arrange a compromise, one of the elements of which was that we should descend from our carriage and trudge up a hill which would bring us to a designated point where, over the paling of the garden, we might obtain an oblique and surreptitious view of a small portion of the castle walls. This suggestion led us to inquire (of each other) to what degree of baseness it is lawful for an enlightened lover of the picturesque to resort in order not to have a blank page in his collection. One of our trio ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... individual Englishmen. Now among Chinamen will be found a range of variety as extensive as among Englishmen, and there is no single trait presented by all Chinamen and no Englishman, or vice versa. Even the oblique eye is not universal in China, and there are probably many Chinamen who might have been "changed at birth," taken away and educated into quite passable Englishmen. Even after we have separated out and allowed for the differences in carriage, physique, moral prepossessions, and so forth, due to their ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... halt at Temassinin we had just left the road followed by Flatters, and taken an oblique course to the south. I have the honor of having antedated Fourcau in demonstrating the importance of Temassinin as a geometrical point for the passage of caravans, and of selecting the place where Captain Pein has just now constructed a fort. The junction for the roads that lead to Touat from ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... she threw out of the centre of the vortex a portion of sand and water at every revolution. She then put in a little fresh water, and as the quantity of sand was now much diminished, she held the calabash in an oblique direction, and made the sand move slowly round on the line AB, while she constantly agitated it with a quick motion ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park

... sun's motion is neither exactly parallel with that of the heavens in general, nor yet directly and diametrically opposite, but describing an oblique line, with insensible declination he steers his course in such a gentle, easy curve, as to dispense his light and influence, in his annual revolution, at several seasons, in just proportions to the whole creation. So it happens ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... steps or notches, each of them being itself a bluff, and all overlooking a valley. The bluffs have a circular curve, are of a red colour, and in perspective appear like a gigantic flat stairway, only that they have an oblique tendency to the southward, caused, I presume, by the wash of ocean currents that, at perhaps no greatly distant geological period, must have swept over them from the north. My eyes, however, were mostly bent upon the high peak in the northern line; and Mr. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... discriminate them." He adds that the more northern Esquimaux dogs are not only extremely like the grey wolves of the Arctic circle in form and colour, but also nearly equal them in size. Dr. Kane has often seen in his teams of sledge-dogs the oblique eye (a character on which some naturalists lay great stress), the drooping tail, and scared look of the wolf. In disposition the Esquimaux dogs differ little from wolves, and, according to Dr. Hayes, they are capable of no attachment ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... 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 ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... 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

... into eight different directions. You are now facing the "front." Face the "left," the "back," the "right," and then "front" again. That makes four directions—front, left, back and right. Face half-way to the left—that is called "left oblique." Face half-way to the back—that is called "left oblique back." Now face back. Face half-way to the right—that is called "right oblique back." Now face half-way to the front. That is called "right oblique." ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... mental equality had been gratifying to his raw ambition; but as his self-knowledge defined itself, his understanding of her also increased; and if man is at times indirectly flattered by the moral superiority of woman, her mental ascendency is extenuated by no such oblique tribute to his powers. The attitude of looking up is a strain on the muscles; and it was becoming more and more Glennard's opinion that brains, in a woman, should be merely the obverse of beauty. To beauty Mrs. Aubyn could lay no ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton

... maior vis aquae se incitavisset, hoc artius illigata tenerentur. Haec derecta materia iniecta contexebantur ac longuriis cratibusque consternebantur; ac nihilo setius sublicae et ad inferiorem partem fluminis oblique agebantur, quae {20} pro ariete subiectae et cum omni opere coniunctae vim fluminis exciperent; et aliae item supra pontem mediocri spatio, ut, si arborum trunci sive naves deiciendi operis essent a barbaris immissae, his defensoribus earum ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... bedded; but where the land is rather level, the three feet rows should be north and south, so as to give to the plants a more full effect on them by passing across the beds, than by crossing them in an oblique direction. To set the plants out regularly, take a task line of 105 feet in length, with a pointed stick three feet long attached to each end of it, then insert a small piece of rag or something else through the line at the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... 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 ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... Seychelles five oblique bands of blue (hoist side), yellow, red, white, and green (bottom) radiating from the bottom ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... that as it is sometimes very prudent to be deaf and dumb in society, so is it extremely convenient upon occasions to be blind. The cuts, direct and oblique—the looks at, and the looks over—the distant, formal bow, and the adroit turn upon the heel (should you perceive the party, intended to be cut for the time being at least, advancing with dire intent of obliging a recognition), may be, especially upon old and provincial friends, practised ad libitum, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various

... before he quite disappears in the great clouds, behind which he is slowly mounting, casts here and there some oblique rays upon the troubled sea, and gilds the transparent crest of some of the tallest waves. A band of snow-white foam boils and rages as far as the eye can reach, along the line of the reefs that bristle on ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... stone of our old buildings, such as the Town-Hall, which I believe was obtained from quarries occupying the site of the St. James's Cemetery. This is due to what is called current bedding; that is to say, the grains have been arranged along oblique lines and curves instead of in parallel laminae. This stone, which is geologically equivalent to the Storeton Stone, and of the same nature, has stood very well. Some of the Storeton Stone, if free from clay galls, although ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... great authors who are 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, ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... Hilger under Mr Christie's direction on a new plan, in which either great dispersion or great purity of spectrum is obtained by the use of 'Half-prisms,' according as the incident pencil falls first on the perpendicular or on the oblique face. In this Spectroscope either one or two half prisms can be used at pleasure, according to the dispersion required, and there is facility for increasing the train to three or four half-prisms, though the dispersion with two only is nearly double of that given by the large ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... weep like a soft cloud in April's bosom Upon the sleeping eyelids of the plant, So that perhaps it dreamed that Spring was come, 190 And crept abroad into the moonlight air, And loosened all its limbs, as, noon by noon, The sun averted less his oblique beam. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... with outstretched 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, and the inhabitants could always tell when a jaguar was in the neighborhood, by his recent autograph on ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... the sternmost life-line 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 were ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

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

... are peculiar in their construction; the soles are about an inch in thickness, formed of several layers of leather, which are fastened together by large-headed nails from beneath; these are directed in an oblique line, so as to pass through the edge of the upper leather and secure it to the sole exactly as the shoe of a horse is fitted to the hoof. The nails are long and thin, and are riveted by turning the points round and hammering ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... him an oblique glance. "That's easy. That plane that tried to clobber us, and these others that have been trying to search us out, aren't really Reunited Nations ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... 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, in ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... FACE. Yes, in oblique he'll shew you, or in circle; But never in diameter. The whole town Study his theorems, and dispute them ordinarily ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... immediately over their heads. The reason for this caution is, that children seek, and pursue almost instinctively, bright objects; and are thus liable to contract a habit of moving their eyes in an oblique direction, which may ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... hollows, as could be divined by the lines of roofs; the Butte des Moulins surged upward, with waves of old slates, while the line of the principal boulevards dipped downward like a gutter, ending in a jumble of houses whose tiles even could no longer be seen. At this early hour the oblique sun did not light up the house-fronts looking towards the Trocadero; not a window-pane of these threw back its rays. The skylights on some roofs alone sparkled with the glittering reflex of mica amidst the red of the adjacent ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... propeller was first suggested to the inventor by a study of the means employed to propel the inhabitants of the air and deep. He satisfied himself that all such propulsion in Nature is produced by oblique action; though, in common with all practical men, he at first supposed that it was inseparably attended by a loss of power. But when he reflected that this was the principle invariably adopted by the Great Mechanician of the Universe, in enabling the birds, insects, and fishes to move ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... great blocks of stone left there by the workmen employed in repairing the cathedral, but who had long since abandoned their task, he thought over all that had recently occurred. Raising his eyes at length, he looked toward the cathedral. The oblique rays of the sun had quitted the columns of the portico, which looked cold and grey, while the roof and towers were glittering in light. In ten minutes more, only the summit of the central tower caught the last reflection of the declining orb. Leonard watched the ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... ripe and mellow afternoons that sometimes colour London with their golden light at this time of the 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 ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... but little difference, poor beast!" exclaimed Pencroft, heaving out two bags of sand, and as he spoke letting go the cable; the balloon ascending in an oblique direction, disappeared, after having dashed the car against two chimneys, which it threw down as it ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... latter were clearly also conscious of the fact, for they now turned their boats' 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. ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty

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

... awed and silent companion. They had entered a wood through which the road passed, and there seemed to be a hallowed stillness in the cool, grayish touch of the coming night that pervaded the boughs and foliage of the trees. Beyond the wood a mountain-peak rose in a blaze of molten gold from the oblique rays of the setting sun, but here the night-dews were beginning to fall and the chirping insects of the dark were waking. In the marshy spots frogs were croaking and snarling, and fireflies were cutting, to their kind perhaps readable, hieroglyphics on ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... (with two of the strings reaching beyond the key-board, used as drones and struck by the thumb, the bow only being used on the other four, and a bridge placed, not at right angles to the sides of the instrument, but in an oblique direction), though in some important respects inferior to the violin, is in other respects superior to it. Heard among the peaks of Snowdon, as I heard them during our search for Winifred, the notes of the crwth have ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... Heroic Chief, hurl'd his long shadow'd spear And struck the oval shield of Priam's son. Through his bright disk the weapon tempest-driven Glided, and in his hauberk-rings infixt At his soft flank, ripp'd wide his vest within. 300 Inclined oblique he 'scaped the dreadful doom Then each from other's shield his massy spear Recovering quick, like lions hunger-pinch'd Or wild boars irresistible in force, They fell to close encounter. Priam's ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... both were absent: Robinson gone to Australia, and George forfeited his recognizances and had, to pay a hundred pound for it. The defendants were freed. Then Isaac Levi said to himself, "He will not keep faith with me." But he did not know his man. Meadows had a conscience, though an oblique one. A promise from him was sacred in his own eyes. A man came to Grassmere and left a hundred pound in a letter for George Fielding. Then he went on to Levi, and gave him a parcel and a note. The parcel contained the title-deeds of the house; and the note said: "Take the house and the furniture ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... 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 or trailing, downy, 2 to 4 ft. long. Leaves: Tendril ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... which are found have the figure of an oblique parallelepiped; each of the six faces being a parallelogram; and it admits of being split in three directions parallel to two of these opposed faces. Even in such wise, if you will, that all the six faces are equal and similar rhombuses. The figure here added represents ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens

... time or space to give remorse an inning. The Cherokees, checked but for the moment, were storming hotly at our heels. And as we ran I heard the shouted command of Falconnet to his mounted men: "A rescue! Right oblique, and head them in the road! Gallop, ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... but having gathered in groups, in their bright coloured beshmets with white kerchiefs on their heads pulled down to their eyes, they sat either on the ground or on the earth-banks about the huts sheltered from the oblique rays of the sun, and laughed and chattered in their ringing voices. Little boys and girls playing in the square sent their balls high up into the clear sky, and ran about squealing and shouting. The half-grown girls had started dancing their khorovods, and were timidly ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy

... lilac shrubs against the iron palings just inside and between the palings and the path, but two of the shrubs were dead and leafless, and each time the man passed this spot he came into plain view; each time, also, he directed an oblique glance toward the house opposite. Presently he turned aside and sat down upon one of the public benches, where he was almost, but not quite, hidden ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... cross veins, one or more in number, extending between M1 2 and the bridge (in de Selys between principal and subnodal sectors) proximal to the oblique vein. ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... Range. The high side of this magnificent and impressive line of mountains faced west—a succession of unscalable slopes of bare ragged rock, jagged and jutted, dark drab, rusty iron, with gray and oblique strata running through them far as eye could see. Clouds soared around the peaks. Shadows sailed ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... and falling alternately while singing, and in some cases all the aerial postures and movements, the swift or slow descent, vertical, often, with oscillations, or in a spiral, and sometimes with a succession of smooth oblique lapses, seem to have an admirable correspondence with the changing and falling voice—melody and motion being united in a more intimate and beautiful way than in the most perfect and poetic forms of ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... 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, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... accuracy of my method. It were well, then, to inform MR. SHADBOLT, that in perspective, planes parallel to the plane of delineation (in this case, the glass at back of camera) have no vanishing points; that planes at right angles to plane of delineation have but one; and that planes oblique have but one vanishing point, to the right or left, as it may be, of the observer's eye. This premised, let the subject be a wall 300 feet in length, with two abutments of one foot in front and five feet in projection, and each placed ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various

... by day in sequestered little groves or deep, hidden canons, with only Luis Rojas to bear her company—Luis Rojas whom she did not trust and therefore watched always from under her long straight lashes, with oblique glances when she seemed to be gazing straight before her; three nights of tramping through rough places where often the horses must pause and feel carefully for space to set their feet. Roads there were, but Luis avoided roads as though they carried the plague. When he must cross ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower

... would appear, that the eddies of wind were owing to the long range of broken rocks, which bounded one side of the sandy desert, and bent the currents of air, which struck against their sides; and were thus like the eddies in a stream of water, which falls against oblique obstacles. This explanation is probably the true one, as these whirl-winds were not attended with rain or lightening like the tornadoes of ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... ashore, and Lionel remained under the covert of mighty willows that dipped their leaves into the wave. Looking through the green interstices of the foliage, he saw at the far end of the lawn, on a curving bank by which the glittering tide shot oblique, a simple arbour—an arbour like that from which he had looked upon summer stars five years ago—not so densely covered with the honeysuckle; still the honeysuckle, recently trained there, was fast creeping up the sides; and through the trellis of the woodwork and the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the correct letter is added above the line over the wrong letter; occasionally it is written over an erasure. An omitted letter is also added above the line over the space where it should be inserted. Deletion of single letters is indicated by a dot placed over the letter and a horizontal or an oblique line drawn through it. This double use of expunction and cancellation is not uncommon in our oldest manuscripts. For details on the subject of corrections, see ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand

... was the delicate point, for social commerce with such malheureux as Mr. Dosson and Delia was not in the least in their usual line and it was impossible to disconnect the poor girl from her appendages. Therefore the whole question must be approached by an oblique movement—it would never do to march straight up. The wedge should have a narrow end, which Gaston now made sure he had found. His sister Susan was another name for this subtle engine; he would break her in first and she would help him to break in the others. She was his favourite relation, ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James

... and clasped by roses and ribbons, an oblique cross of roses lying on a bed of ivy, a basket made of ivy and autumn leaves, holding a sheaf of grain and a sickle of violets, an ivy pillow with a cross of flowers on one side, a bunch of pansies held by a knot of ribbon at one corner, ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... in the hall, and then the sound of her footsteps in the "reception room." After a time, silence succeeded even these slight tokens of her presence; whereupon George rose and went warily into the hall, taking care to make no noise, and he obtained an oblique view of her through the open double doors of the "reception room." She was sitting in the chair which he had occupied so long; and she was looking out of the ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... contrast between the grassy slopes and deodar-clothed mountains of Kashmir and the flaming aridity of Lesser Tibet, than between the tall, dark, handsome natives of the one, with their statuesque and shrinking women, and the ugly, short, squat, yellow- skinned, flat-nosed, oblique-eyed, uncouth-looking people of the other. The Kashmiris are false, cringing, and suspicious; the Tibetans truthful, independent, and friendly, one of the pleasantest of peoples. I 'took' to them at once at Shergol, ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)

... big pile of timber, was the beginning of a small spouting house, to be connected with the main elevator by a belt gallery above the C. & S. C. tracks. A hundred yards to the westward, up the river, the Belt Line tracks crossed the river and the C. & S. C. right of way at an oblique angle, and sent two side tracks lengthwise through the middle of the elevator and a third along the south side, that is, the ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin

... to stiffen his body. With extraordinary strength, he had lifted himself above the water, holding his body in an oblique position. Rut the strain was too great. Nevertheless, he struggled, tried to reach some of the beams, felt around him for something to hold to. Then, resigning himself, he ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola

... he said, "you take no more exercise than I do, and probably you eat no less." (Like all excessively obese people he fancied he ate nothing.) "Yet,"—and he smiled an oblique ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... 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 are liable to canker more than others, while the ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... play is Othello. This is a really fine play and was a favourite of G. Washington, the father of his country. On this stage, as upon all stages, the good old conventionalities are strictly adhered to. The actors cross each other at oblique angles from L.U.E. to R. I. E. on the slightest provocation. Othello howls, Iago scowls, and the boys all laugh when Roderigo dies. I stay to see charming Mrs. Irwin (Desdemona) die, which ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne

... to say that the dancer moves his feet in perfect time to the rhythm of the drum and gong, at the same time keeping the arms, hands, fingers, head, and shoulders in constant movement. Now one hand is laid upon the hip while the other is extended upward and at an oblique angle from the shoulder. Again both hands are placed upon the hips and the dancer trips around a few times when suddenly turning, he retires hastily, but in perfect time, with both arms extended upwards and at an angle from the shoulders, the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... the sun swept down behind the southern hills, and the windows of Lumley's house at the Forks, catching the oblique rays, glittered and shone like flaming silver. Nothing of life showed, save the cattle here and there, creeping away to the shelter of the foothills for the night. The white, placid snow made a coverlet ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... is that of oblique and covert reflections; when a man doth not directly or expressly charge his neighbour with faults, but yet so speaketh that he is understood, or reasonably presumed to do it. This is a very cunning and very mischievous way of slandering; for therein ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... observation is about 1/30 of the moon's surface, and in order to ensure accuracy the instrument has to be directed to a spot lying wholly within the edge of the moon, it is evident that the surface measured has already been for several hours exposed to oblique sunshine. The curve of temperature then rises gradually and afterwards more rapidly, till it attains its maximum (of about 30 to 40 deg. F.) a few hours before noon. This, Mr. Very thinks, is ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace

... buffalo would gain handsomely upon Aggo, and be just at the point of laying hold of him, when off Aggo would hop, a good furlong, in an oblique line, wide out of his reach; which bringing him nearly in contact with another of the herd, away he would go again, just as ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews

... very numerous, and a few characteristic forms are here figured (fig. 72). Of these, no genus is perhaps more characteristic than Euomphalus (fig. 72, b), with its flat discoidal shell, coiled up into an oblique spiral, and deeply hollowed out on one side; but examples of this group are both of older and of more modern date. Another very extensive genus, especially in America, is Platyceras (fig. 72, a and f), with ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... a form of argument to secure reason, and not to entrap it; the end of morality is to procure the affections to obey reason, and not to invade it; the end of rhetoric is to fill the imagination to second reason, and not to oppress it; for these abuses of arts come in but ex oblique, for caution. ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... of this design, that a man perpetually brooding over one scheme, which to him has become the very sustenance of existence, and which scheme, perpetually frustrated, grows desperate by disappointment, acquires a heat of morbid and oblique enthusiasm, which may be not unreasonably termed insanity; and that, at the very time Wolfe reconciled it to his conscience to commit the murder of his fellow creature, he would have moved out of his path for a worm. Assassination, indeed, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... familiarity with China's ruling vice and contact with those who practiced it had brought about that mysterious physical alteration—apparently reflecting a mental change—so often to be seen in one who has consorted with Chinamen. Even the light eyes seemed to have grown slightly oblique; the voice, the unimpassioned greeting, were those of a son of Cathay. He carried himself with a stoop and had ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... would have avoided the multiplication of circumstances, names, and dates; or if he had thought it necessary to intersperse his composition with them, he would have contented himself with such as were most general and notorious; the minute, circuitous, and oblique allusions, which it required patient examination to detect, and vast local knowledge to appreciate, could not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... please? Do," she said, leaning back in her chair, and placing her hand above her forehead, while her almond eyes—those long eyes so common to the angelic legions of early Italian art—became longer, and her voice more languishing. She showed that oblique-mannered softness which is perhaps most frequent in women of darker complexion and more lymphatic temperament than Mrs. Charmond's was; who lingeringly smile their meanings to men rather than speak them, who inveigle rather than prompt, and take advantage of currents ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... was fading in Giovanni Selva's study, and on the little table covered with books and papers. Giovanni rose and opened the west window. The horizon was on fire behind Subiaco, along the oblique line of the Sabine hills, which stretch from Rocca di Canterano and Rocca di Mezzo to Rocca San Stefano. Subiaco, that pointed pile of houses large and small which culminates in the Rocca del Cardinale, was veiled in shadow; not a branch stirred on the olives clustered behind the small, ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

... is 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; in Alepas alone they surround the whole capitulum up to its summit. In Lithotrya ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin

... without pretending to wait for the diurnal coffee and liqueurs; while the few remarks that he had contributed to the conversation during the meal had not been in the direction of abstract conceptions of life. As he strayed away, with his vague oblique step, and the stoop that suggested the habit of dodging missiles, Vibart, who was still in the age of formulas, found himself wondering what life could be worth to a man who had evidently resigned himself to travelling with his back to the wind; so that Mrs. Carstyle's allusion to her daughter's ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton



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



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