athwart
/əˈθwɔːt
/preposition
1From side to side of; across: a counter was placed athwart the entrance...
- I glance in the mirror and find, to my disappointment, that she's still athwart the bike.
- The old men pose athwart a water wheel.
- While Matsya lay athwart the route from the northern lands to the ports on the western coast, it was not a place of great enterprise.
2In opposition to; counter to: these statistics run sharply athwart conventional presumptions...
- At a time when America's elites said that the United States was in an irreversible decline, and the rest of us should just get used to it, Ronald Reagan stood athwart what was then considered the tide of history and said: ‘No.’
- She tells me they're giving an award to the senator because he stands athwart conventional wisdom on many issues.
- Unfortunately, without the ‘Language Police’ standing athwart language liberalization, every usage would slip into the dictionary.
adverb
1Across from side to side; transversely: one table running athwart was all the room would hold
2So as to be perverse or contradictory: our words ran athwart and we ended up at cross purposes...
- Ultimately though, what is more intriguing about this work is the manner in which it runs athwart of some contemporary photography to instead de-emphasize overt expressivity.
- As Harry made clear, being different meant neither better nor inferior, but athwart.
Origin
Late Middle English: from a-2 'on' + thwart.