Definition of "atilt"
atilt
adjective
not comparable
At an angle from the vertical or horizontal.
Quotations
When I came to the river, I ached in sympathy with the shipping painfully atilt on the rock-like surface of the brine, which broke against the piers, and sprayed itself over them like showers of powdered quartz.
1902, William Dean Howells, “Worries of a Winter Walk”, in Literature and Life, New York: Harper, page 37
adverb
not comparable
Tilting or as if tilting (charging with a lance, like a knight on horseback in a joust).
Quotations
What will you do, good grey-beard? break a lance,And run a tilt at death within a chair?
1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act III, scene ii]
Make feeble Ladies, in their Works,To fight like Termagants and Turks;To lay their native Arms aside,Their modesty, and ride a-stride;To run a-Tilt at Men, and wieldTheir naked tools in open field;
1663, [Samuel Butler], “The Second Part of Hudibras”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678; republished in A[lfred] R[ayney] Waller, editor, Hudibras: Written in the Time of the Late Wars, Cambridge: University Press, 1905, page 79
preposition
Quotations