Definition of "elliptical"

Having admitted that the projectile was describing an orbit around the moon, this orbit must necessarily be elliptical; science proves that it must be so.

1876, “Chapter XIX”, in Edward Roth, transl., All Around the Moon

If he is sometimes elliptical and obscure, it is because he has so much to tell us.

1940, Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station

Browning's dark and elliptical mode of speech, like his love of the grotesque, was simply a characteristic of his, a trick of his temperament, and had little or nothing to do with whether what he was expressing was profound or superficial.

1903, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “Chapter VI”, in Robert Browning

He was called a tramp; but that was only an elliptical way of saying that he was a philosopher, an artist, a traveller, a naturalist and a discoverer.

early 20th century, O. Henry, The Making of a New Yorker