obliquity

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   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.

2. 2
   noun

   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.

3. 3
   noun

   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.

4. 4
   noun

   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.

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

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