Word of the Day: Obliquity

Word of the Day for Tuesday 6^th May 2014

Obliquity \ uh-BLIK-wi-tee, oh-BLIK- \,

1. Divergence from moral conduct, rectitude, etc.; immorality, dishonesty,

or the like.

2. The state of being oblique.

3. An instance of such divergence.

4. Mental perversity.

5. An instance of mental perversity.

6. An inclination or a degree of inclination.

7. A confusing or obscure statement or passage of writing, especially one

deliberately made obscure.

8. Also called obliquity of the ecliptic. Astronomy. The angle between the

plane of the earth's orbit and that of the earth's equator, equal to 23°27′;

the inclination of the earth's equator.

Quotes:

But that is not all, that is not his worst defect; his worst defect is his

perpetual moral obliquity ,perpetual from the days of the Flood to the

Schleswig Holstein period.

-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, translated by Constance Garnett, Notes from

Underground , 1864, translation published in 1918

…this obliquity is curious insofar as it gives birth to an upright form, whose

very verticality absorbs its departure in slanting forms, and here there is a

kind of agreeable challenge for the visitor…

-- Roland Barthes, "The Eiffel Tower," A Barthes Reader, 1982

A decade ago Hustvedt published a bestselling novel, "What I Loved,"

which re-imagines the events with all the obliquity of an episode of

"Law & Order."

-- Dana Goodyear, "Long Short Story," The New Yorker, March 17, 2014

Origin:

Obliquity is related to the Latin word oblīquitās which meant "oblique."