atilt
atilt adjective: at an angle from the vertical or horizontal.
Adjective
atilt (not comparable)
- At an angle from the vertical or horizontal.
- The child listened, her head atilt.
- 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
- Synonyms:
- tilted
Adverb
atilt (not comparable)
- At an angle from the vertical or horizontal; at the point of falling over.
- He wore his hat rakishly atilt.
- Ale should not be drunk under five dayes old; new Ale is unwholsome, sowre Ale, and dead, and Ale which do stand atilt is most unwholesome.1659, Nicholas Culpeper, “Doctor Diets Directory”, in Culpeper’s School of Physick, London: N. Brook, page 300
- Tilting or as if tilting (charging with a lance, like a knight on horseback in a joust).
- to run / ride atilt at someone or something
- 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]...
Preposition
atilt
- Diagonally over or across.
- A butterfly flew into the garden, danced a stately minuet mid-air, courtsied, and settled atilt the top rail of the old “snake fence.”1911, Jennie Brooks, Under Oxford Trees, Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham, page 80
- [He] was balanced atilt a wooden chair, his legs resting on a low file cabinet.1982, Jean Scott Wood Creighton (as J. S. Borthwick), The Case of the Hook-billed Kites, New York: St. Martin’s Press, Chapter 11, p. 29
- Synonyms:
- aslant
Examples of atilt in a sentence
- In other villages the shawled women sat knitting behind piles of beets and cabbages and apples, their farm-carts atilt in the sun.1918, Winston Churchill, chapter 3, in A Traveller in War-Time, New York: Macmillan, page 77:
- […] the slope flattened to a wide shelf where limestone cropped through the heather and many huge boulders were scattered atilt.1928, Maurice Walsh, chapter 24, in While Rivers Run, London: W. & R. Chambers:
- Had earthquakes shaken the windows atilt so they mirrored intruders with distorted gleams and glares?1969, Ray Bradbury, “The Haunting of the New”, in I Sing the Body Electric!, New York: Knopf, page 136:
- Though ten thousand Curiassiers run upon him atilt with envenom’d and poysoned spears, he layes him down in the bosome of God, he sleeps in peace;1669, Samuel Lee, chapter 7, in Contemplations on Mortality, London, page 69:
Synonyms of atilt
Forms of atilt
| alternative form | a-tilt |
|---|
Origin of atilt
From a- + tilt.
Questions about atilt
- What does atilt mean?
- Atilt means at an angle from the vertical or horizontal.
- How do you use atilt in a sentence?
- In other villages the shawled women sat knitting behind piles of beets and cabbages and apples, their farm-carts atilt in the sun.
- What part of speech is atilt?
- Atilt can be an adjective, an adverb or a preposition.
Words near atilt in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: atilt (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “atilt.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/atilt. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.