Dictionary

obliquity en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /oʊˈblɪkwɪti/ (US)
• /əˈblɪkwɪti/ (US)
• /əˈblɪkwɪti/ (UK)
• (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

From Middle French obliquité, from Latin oblīquitās, from oblīquus (“oblique”). Corresponding to oblique + -ity.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) The quality of being oblique in direction, deviating from the horizontal or vertical; or the angle created by such a deviation.
   • The Planet Earth, so stedfast though she seem, / Insensibly three different Motions move? / Which else to several Sphears thou must ascribe, / Mov'd contrarie with thwart obliquities 1667, John Milton, “(please specify the page number)”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 766-769:
   • Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in Jonah’s room; and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all, though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it hung. 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 9, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
   • She wore glasses which, in humble reference to a divergent obliquity of vision, she called her straighteners, and a little ugly snuff-coloured dress trimmed with satin bands in the form of scallops and glazed with antiquity. 1897 October 16, Henry James, What Maisie Knew, Chicago, Ill.; New York, N.Y.: Herbert S. Stone & Co., →OCLC:
2. (broadly, countable, of a planet, uncountable) Axial tilt.
   • Calculating by spherical trigonometry, and assuming the same obliquity, I obtain 3 dundas and 40 pulas for the ascensional arc, giving a difference in time of 3 pulas, or about one of our minutes; an error so small, that even were the Indian astronomer aware of its existence he would disregard it, satisfied that the practical purposes which his labours subserve, are, notwithstanding, carried out with sufficient accuracy. 1839 October, J.J. Middleton, “Description of an Astronomical Instrument presented by Raja Ram Sing, of Khota, to the Government of India”, in Journal of the Asiatic Society, volume 8, number 94, page 837:
3. (countable, uncountable) Mental or moral deviation or perversity; immorality.
   • Habitually living with the elements and knowing little more of the land than as a beach, or, rather, that portion of the terraqueous globe providentially set apart for dance-houses, doxies and tapsters, in short what sailors call a "fiddlers'-green," his simple nature remained unsophisticated by those moral obliquities which are not in every case incompatible with that manufacturable thing known as respectability. 1924, Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative), Constable & Co.:
   • Whereas Reef's "friends," business and personal, were mostly no strangers to trouble, nor that complicated to understand, Stray's, apt to keep more to the shadows, tended to be practitioners of obliquity—as it quite often came down to, varieties of pimp. 2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Penguin Press, page 404:
4. (countable, uncountable) The quality of being obscure, oftentimes willfully, sometimes as an exercise in euphemism.
   • That spiked my gun. I could not say anything. I was entirely out of verbal obliquities; to go further would be to lie, and that I would not do; so I simply sat still and suffered,—sat mutely and resignedly there, and sizzled,—for I was being slowly fried to death in my own blushes. 1880, Mark Twain [pseudonym] (Samuel L[anghorne] Clemens), chapter XXV, in A Tramp Abroad; […], Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company; London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC, page 253:

Forms

Synonyms

corruption · baseness · obliquity · misdoing · peccability · obscurity · lewdity · iniquity · malignity · degradation · depravity · perversion · depravedness · pravity · degeneracy · depravity · wickedness · perversion · defilement · pollution · turpitude · depravation · sinfulness · vitiation · misguilt · wrongdoing · sin · degeneracy · obliqueness · impurity

Translations (24)

ru оши́бка (mental or moral deviation) · ru накло́н (quality of being oblique) · ru конусность (quality of being oblique) · fi pahe (mental or moral deviation) · el λοξότητα (quality of being oblique) · bg полегатост (quality of being oblique) · bg простъпка (mental or moral deviation) · ru перекос (quality of being oblique) · ca obliqüitat (quality of being oblique) · fi vinous (quality of being oblique) · ru накло́н о́си враще́ния ((astronomy) axial tilt) · la obliquitas (quality of being oblique) · fr obliquité (quality of being oblique) · ru скос (quality of being oblique) · pt obliquidade (quality of being oblique) · pt obliquidade (mental or moral deviation) · ru у́гол наклона (quality of being oblique) · ru косое направле́ние (quality of being oblique) · bg наклоненост (quality of being oblique) · fi akselin kaltevuus ((astronomy) axial tilt) · fi kieroutuneisuus (mental or moral deviation) · grc λοξότης (quality of being oblique) · ru просту́пок (mental or moral deviation) · ru наруше́ние (mental or moral deviation)