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.

Postscript

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

Postscript

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.