oblique means not erect or perpendicular; not parallel to, or at right angles from, the base. It carries an Arena rating of 1752, earned across 5 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, oblique ranks #65 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #234 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #1,283 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #2,207 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words.
oblique is pronounced /əˈbliːk/.
Why “oblique” is a great word
Neither parallel nor at a right angle to a specified or implied line; slanting, or expressed in an indirect or ambiguous manner. From Middle French oblique, from Latin oblīquus (also spelled oblīcus) meaning "slanting, sideways, indirect, envious." Unlike "direct," which proceeds in a straight line of thought, or "perpendicular," which asserts a rigid, exact orthogonality, "oblique" occupies the vast, ambiguous territory of the askew—it is the angle that refuses to declare itself. It is the rain driven not straight down but against the windowpane, the hint dropped in a conversation that circles its true subject, and the shadow that falls longest and most tellingly not at noon, but in the late afternoon. To be oblique is to understand that the shortest distance between two points is often a line too brutally honest to travel.
Etymology
From Middle French oblique, from Latin oblīquus (also spelled oblīcus) (“slanting, sideways, indirect, envious”).
adj
- Not erect or perpendicular; not parallel to, or at right angles from, the base.e.g.“Italic fonts are sometimes described as oblique in typographic terminology.”
- Not straightforward; indirect; by implication; (sometimes even) obscure, ambiguous, or confusing.e.g.“The email from HR obliquely informed her that some complaints about her had been received.”
- Disingenuous; underhand; morally corrupt.e.g.“For the love we bear our friends, / Tho nere so strongly grounded, / Hath in it certain oblique ends / If to the bottome sounded” — 1630, Michael Drayton, “The Third Nimphall”, in The Muses Elyzium:
- Not direct in descent; not following the line of father and son; collateral.e.g.“His natural affection in a direct line was strong; in an oblique, but weak; for no man ever loved Children more, or a Brother less.” — 1665, Richard Baker, “The Reign of King Henry the First”, in A Chronicle of the Kings of England, page 49:
- Having the base of the blade asymmetrical, with one side lower than the other.e.g.“Leaves long, lanceolate, tapering upward from the middle to an acute point, […] secondaries very oblique, distinct, alternate, parallel, curved in transversing the blade” — 1892, Leo Lesquereux, The Flora of the Dakota Group, page 78:
- Growing at an angle that is neither vertical nor horizontal.e.g.“Oblique and sinker roots will normally be under a greater compression stress than lateral roots.” — 1997, A. Stokes, D. Guitard, “Tree Root Response to Mechanical Stress”, in Arie Altman, Yoav Waisel, editors, Biology of Root Formation and Development, page 233:
- Pertaining to the oblique case (non-nominative).
- Indirect; employing the actual words of the speaker but as related by a third person, having the first person in pronoun and verb converted into the third person and adverbs of present time into the past, etc.e.g.“They found out obliquely that she had heard from HR about the comments and was taking some time to absorb the sting of an implied reprimand.”
- Employing oblique motion, motion or progression in which one part (voice) stays on the same note while another ascends or descends.e.g.“In passing from the minor third to unison, the motion ought to be oblique, but from the major third to unison the motion ought to be similar” — 1837, Allan Cunningham, “Music”, in The Popular Encyclopedia, page 109:
noun
- An oblique line.
- Synonym of slash ⟨/⟩.
- The oblique case.
- The musculus obliquus externus abdominis or also obliquus internus abdominis.
verb
- To deviate from a perpendicular line; to become askew.e.g.“he sat upon the edge of his chair […] and achieved a communication with his plate by projecting his person towards it in a line which obliqued from the bottom of his spine” — 1814, Sir Walter Scott, Waverly:
- To march in a direction oblique to the line of the column or platoon; — formerly accomplished by oblique steps, now by direct steps, the men half-facing either to the right or left.
- To slant (text, etc.) at an angle.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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