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atilt

adjective

No English definition recorded for this entry.

L20065 on Wikidata ↗

Wiktionary

adj

Etymology: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Indo-European *n̥- Proto-Hellenic *ə- Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-)der. English a- English tilt English atilt From a- + tilt.

  1. At an angle from the vertical or horizontal.

    The child listened, her head atilt.

    When I came to the river, I ached in sympathy with the shipping painfully atilt on the rock-like surface of the brine, which broke against the piers, and sprayed itself over them like showers of powdered quartz.

adv

Etymology: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Indo-European *n̥- Proto-Hellenic *ə- Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-)der. English a- English tilt English atilt From a- + tilt.

  1. At an angle from the vertical or horizontal; at the point of falling over.

    He wore his hat rakishly atilt.

    Ale should not be drunk under five dayes old; new Ale is unwholsome, sowre Ale, and dead, and Ale which do stand atilt is most unwholesome.

  2. Tilting or as if tilting (charging with a lance, like a knight on horseback in a joust).

    to run / ride atilt at someone or something

    What will you do, good grey-beard? break a lance, And run a tilt at death within a chair?

prep

Etymology: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Indo-European *n̥- Proto-Hellenic *ə- Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-)der. English a- English tilt English atilt From a- + tilt.

  1. Diagonally over or across.

    A butterfly flew into the garden, danced a stately minuet mid-air, courtsied, and settled atilt the top rail of the old “snake fence.”

    1982, Jean Scott Wood Creighton (as J. S. Borthwick), The Case of the Hook-billed Kites, New York: St. Martin’s Press, Chapter 11, p. 29, [He] was balanced atilt a wooden chair, his legs resting on a low file cabinet.