Athwart (pronounced uh-thwawrt)
(1) From
side to side; crosswise, transversely.
(2) In admiralty
use, at right angles to the fore-and-aft line; across.
(3) Perversely;
awry; wrongly.
1425-1475:
From the Late Middle English athwart
and a proclitic form of preposition; the construct was a + thwart. The a prefix is from the Old English an (on) which in Middle English meant “up,
out, away”, both derived from the Proto-Germanic uz (out), from the primitive Indo-European uds (up, out); cognate with the Old Saxon ā which endures in Modern German as the prefix er. Thwart is from the Middle
English thwert, a borrowing from Old
Norse þvert (across), originally the neuter
form of þverr (transverse, across),
from the Proto-Germanic þwerhaz,
altered or influenced by þweraną (to
turn) and þerh, from the primitive Indo-European
twork & twerk (to twist). Cognates
include the Old English þweorh
(transverse, perverse, angry, cross), the Danish tvær, the Gothic þwaírs (angry),
the West Frisian dwers (beyond,
across, to the other side of), the Dutch dwars
(cross-grained, contrary), the Low German dwars
(cross-grained, contrary) and the German quer
(crosswise; cross). The modern English queer
is related. Although still used by poets
good and bad, the word is probably obsolete for all purposes except historic
admiralty documents.
Admiralty use.
Samuel
Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Kubla Khan (1798)
In Xanadu did Kubla
Khan
A stately
pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the
sacred river, ran
Through caverns
measureless to man
Down to a sunless
sea.
So twice five miles
of fertile ground
With walls and
towers were girdled round:
And here were
gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed
many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests
ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny
spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep
romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill
athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as
holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a
waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing
for her demon-lover!
And from this
chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in
fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain
momently was forced;
Amid whose swift
half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments
vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain
beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these
dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up
momently the sacred river.
Five miles
meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and
dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the
caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult
to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this
tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices
prophesying war!
The shadow of the
dome of pleasure
Floated midway on
the waves:
Where was heard the
mingled measure
From the fountain
and the caves.
It was a miracle of
rare device,
A sunny
pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a
dulcimer
In a vision once I
saw:
It was an
Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer
she played,
Singing of Mount
Abora.
Could I revive
within me
Her symphony and
song,
To such a deep
delight't would win me
That with music
loud and long,
I would build that
dome in air,
That sunny dome!
those caves of ice!
And all who heard
should see them there,
And all should cry,
Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes,
his floating hair!
Weave a circle
round him thrice,
And close your eyes
with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew
hath fed,
And drunk the milk
of Paradise.
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