Athwart By Deane Barker • September 8, 2021 • 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 Added on August 28, 2022 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 Added on July 1, 2023 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.