Definition of "aslant"

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:

1601, C[aius] Plinius Secundus [i.e., Pliny the Elder], “[Book XVII.] 22.”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Historie of the World. Commonly Called, The Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus. […], (please specify |tome=1 or 2), London: […] Adam Islip, published 1635, page 533

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.

1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], (please specify |part=I to IV), page 94

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.

1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 81, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, page 400

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.

1961, Walker Percy, The Moviegoer‎, New York: Avon, published 1980, Part 3, Chapter 1, p. 107

The Shaft that slightly was impress’d,Now from his heavy Fall with weight increas’d,Drove through his Neck, aslant,

1700, “The Twelfth Book of Ovid his Metamorphoses”, in John Dryden, transl., Fables, Ancient and Modern‎, London: Jacob Tonson, page 447

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

1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter II, in Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. […], volume III, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], page 65

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.

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

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

2018, Anna Burns, chapter 3, in Milkman, London: Faber & Faber

There is a willow grows aslant a brook,That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.

c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act IV, scene vii]

I oft have passed your cottage, and still prais’dIts beauty, and that trim orchard-plot, whose blossomsThe gusts of April shower’d aslant its thatch.

1816, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Zapolya‎, London: Rest Fenner, published 1817, Scene 1, p. 45

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.

1979, Patrick White, The Twyborn Affair‎, Penguin, published 1981, Part 2, p. 209