Athwart
Definition: to stand in opposition to
Why I Looked It Up
William F. Buckley famously said:
A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.
Update
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From the novel Reamde:
After a few agonizingly slow and controversial minutes of this kind of progress, they came athwart of an alley, no wider than a doorway, on their right side.
In this context, I think it means “perpendicular.” The characters were in a van at the time, and so they would have been across the opening of he alley.
Indeed, Merrium includes this as a definition:
across especially in an oblique direction
Update
Added on
From The Tyranny of Clichés:
It was this kind of Utopian madness that Edmund Burke and his heirs stood athwart, yelling “Stop!”
Clearly, this is a callback to Buckley’s statement from above.