obliquity

Anglais

Étymologie

Du moyen français obliquité, issu du latin obliquitas, dérivé de obliquus (« oblique »).

Nom commun

Singulier	Pluriel
obliquity /Prononciation ?/	obliquities /Prononciation ?/

obliquity

1. (Depuis le XV^e siècle) Obliquité, inclinaison d’une ligne, d’une surface sur une autre.
   • 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 — (John Milton, Paradise Lost, lignes 766-769, 1667)
   • 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. — (Henry James, What Maisie Knew, 1897)
2. (Depuis le XV^e siècle) Obliquité, ce qu’il y a de contraire à la droiture, à la franchise dans sa conduite, dans ses démarches, dans ses comportements.
   • 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. — (Herman Melville, Billy Budd, chapitre 2, 1924)
   • Stray’s [friends], apt to keep more to the shadows, tended to be practitioners of obliquity—as it quite often came down to, varieties of pimp. — (Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage 2007, p. 404, 2006)
   • 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. — (Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad, chapitre 25, 1879)

Prononciation

• (Royaume-Uni) : /əˈblɪkwɪti/
• (États-Unis) : /əˈblɪkwɪɾi/, /oʊˈblɪkwɪɾi/

Références

• Cet article est adapté ou copié (en partie ou en totalité) de l’article du Wiktionnaire en anglais, sous licence CC-BY-SA-3.0 : obliquity, mais a pu être modifié depuis.