different between aslope vs aslant

English

Etymology

From Middle English aslope, probably from or akin to Old English ?slopen, past participle of Old English ?sl?pan (“to slip away”).

Adjective

aslope (not comparable)

1. (archaic) Slanted or sloping.

   Synonyms: diagonal, oblique

   • 1830, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Love, Hope, and Patience in Education” in The Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge, London: William Pickering, 1834, Volume 3, p. 331,^[1]

     Methinks, I see them group’d in seemly show,

     The straiten’d arms uprais’d, the palms aslope,

   • 1911, G. K. Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown, The Honor of Israel Gow

     Far as the eye could see, farther and farther as they mounted the slope, were seas beyond seas of pines, now all aslope one way under the wind.

Adverb

aslope (not comparable)

1. (archaic) Slanted or sloping.

   Synonyms: diagonally, obliquely

   • 1516, Robert Fabyan, Fabyan’s Chronicle, London: William Rastell, 1533, Part 7,^[2]

     But the Flemynges with theyr arbalasters and theyr longe mareys pykes set aslope before them wounded so theyr horses, that they lay tumbelynge one in the others necke […]

   • 1674, Charles Cotton, The Compleat Gamester, London: R. Cutler, Chapter 5, p. 55,^[3]

     The Bishop walks always in the same colour of the field that he is first placed in, forward and backward asloap every way as far as he lists;

   • 1710, Jonathan Swift, “A Description of a City Shower” in Miscellanies, London: Benjamin Motte, 1733, Volume 4, p. 141,^[4]

     Brisk Susan whips her Linnen from the Rope,

     While the first drizzling Show’r is born aslope,

   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, New York: Harper, Chapter 134, p. 617,^[5]

     While the two crews were yet circling in the waters […] , while aslope little Flask bobbed up and down like an empty vial, twitching his legs upward to escape the dreaded jaws of sharks;

2. (archaic, figuratively) In an unintended or unfavourable direction.

   Synonym: off course

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, London: William Ponsonby, Book 3, Canto 4, p. 459,^[6]

     His wicked fortune, that had turnd aslope

   • 1674, John Milton, Paradise Lost, London: S. Simmons, Book 10, p. 282,^[7]

     […] On mee the Curse aslope

     Glanc’d on the ground, with labour I must earne

     My bread; what harm?

Preposition

aslope

1. (archaic) Diagonally over or across.

   Synonyms: aslant, athwart

   • 1616, Thomas Middleton, Civitas Amor, London: Thomas Archer, “Prince Charles his Creation,”^[8]

     […] the King […] puts the Belt ouer the necke of the Knight, aslope his breast, placing the Sword vnder his left Arme:

   • 1899, Madison Cawein, “The Last Song” in Myth and Romance, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, pp. 29-30,^[9]

     A lute, aslope

     The curious baldric of his tunic, glints

     With pearl-reflections of the moon,

Anagrams

• El Paso

English

Etymology

From Middle English aslant (“at an angle, in a curve; from the side, deviously”), from on slante; equivalent to a- +? slant

Adjective

aslant

1. (archaic, literary) Slanting.

   Synonyms: aslope, atilt, diagonal, oblique, slanted

   • 1634, Philemon Holland (translator), The Historie of the World: commonly called, The Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus, London: Adam Islip, Book 17, Chapter 22, p. 533,^[1]

     As for the manner and fashion of the cut [when pruning grapevines], it ought alwaies to be aslant, like a goats foot, that no drops of raine may settle and rest thereupon, but that euery shower may soon shoot off:

   • 1726, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, Volume 1, Part 1, Chapter 6, p. 94,^[2]

     But their manner of writing is very peculiar, being neither from the left to the right, like the Europeans; nor from the right to the left, like the Arabians; nor from up to down, like the Chinese; nor from down to up, like the Cascagians; but aslant from one Corner of the Paper to the other, like Ladies in England.

   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, New York: Harper, Chapter 81, p. 400,^[3]

     Meantime everything in the Pequod was aslant. To cross to the other side of the deck was like walking up the steep gabled roof of a house.

   • 1961, Walker Percy, The Moviegoer, New York: Avon, 1980, Part 3, Chapter 1, p. 107,^[4]

     Now she stands musing on the beach, leg locked, pelvis aslant, thumb and forefingers propped along the iliac crest and lightly, propped lightly as an athlete.

Translations

Adverb

aslant

1. (archaic, literary) At a slant.

   Synonyms: aslope, atilt, diagonally, obliquely

   • 1700, John Dryden (translator), “The Twelfth Book of Ovid his Metamorphoses” in Fables, Ancient and Modern, London: Jacob Tonson, p. 447,^[5]

     The Shaft that slightly was impress’d,

     Now from his heavy Fall with weight increas’d,

     Drove through his Neck, aslant,

   • 1847, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, London: Smith, Elder, Volume 3, Chapter 2, p. 65,^[6]

     It [the light] led me aslant over the hill, through a wide bog;

   • 1914, Constance Garnett (translator), Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1917, Part 4, Chapter 4, p. 321,^[7]

     A wall with three windows looking out on to the canal ran aslant so that one corner formed a very acute angle, and it was difficult to see in it without very strong light.

   • 2018, Anna Burns, Milkman, London: Faber & Faber, Chapter 3,

     […] he was looking aslant and not directly at me; more of a gaze to the side of me.

Translations

Preposition

aslant

1. (archaic, literary) Diagonally over or across.

   Synonyms: aslope, athwart, atilt

   • c. 1600, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 7,^[8]

     There is a willow grows aslant a brook,

     That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.

   • 1816, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Zapolya, London: Rest Fenner, 1817, Scene 1, p. 45,^[9]

     I oft have passed your cottage, and still prais’d

     Its beauty, and that trim orchard-plot, whose blossoms

     The gusts of April shower’d aslant its thatch.

   • 1979, Patrick White, The Twyborn Affair, Penguin, 1981, Part 2, p. 209,^[10]

     But aslant this particular glass reclined a single, white, wintry rose, possibly the last rose ever, its invalid complexion infused with a delicate transcendent green.

Translations

Anagrams

• Santal, alants, natals, santal