oblong

comparative more oblong · superlative most oblong

1. Having a length and width that are different; not square or circular.

   The room was quite dark. The oblong window showed the night sky pricked here and there with stars.

   1967, Barbara Sleigh, Jessamy, Sevenoaks, Kent: Bloomsbury, published 1993, →ISBN, page 19

2. Roughly rectangular or elliptical.

   Plant upright spreading hardy, vigorous and productive; berry, oblong, round, medium size, sweet but rather ideipid.

   1902, A. W. Peart, “Blackberries: Notes by A. W. Peart”, in Annual Report, page 41

3. artsHaving the horizontal axis of a page longer than the vertical; In landscape orientation.

   Of the smaller oblong formats, none is specifically designated for music.

   1971, Donald William Krummel, Oblong Format in Early Music Books, page 316

   1 more example

   Mass cycles and motets had never been presented in small oblong format, so far as we can tell.

   2017, Sean Gallagher, Secular Renaissance Music: Forms and Functions

plural oblongs

1. Something with an oblong shape.

   They sat at the tables—I suppose you know how they are arranged, as a sort of hollow oblong, with the auctioneer at one end and the attendant showing the coins up and down in the middle?

   1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries

2. A rectangle with length and width that are different.

   Jessamy looked round her in a puzzled way, but there was nothing to see but the pale oblong of what looked like a star-pierced sky behind the bars of the nursery window.

   1967, Barbara Sleigh, Jessamy, Sevenoaks, Kent: Bloomsbury, published 1993, →ISBN, page 88

3. An ellipse with minor and major axes that are different.

present singular third person oblongs · participle present oblonging · participle past oblonged · past oblonged

1. transitiveTo extend so as to form an oblong shape.

   […]; by John Denmans hom lot on the north sid the front by a salt crek the reare to the comon which hom lot with all the upland oblonging to it conteining to about fourtie acers more or lese with about one acer & half of salt medo liing before the said house[…]

   1670, John Bull, signed sealed and delivered in the psents of Antony Waters [/] Rachell (X) Waters; republished as “Town Minutes”, in Town Minutes of Newtown: 1656-1688 (Transcriptions of Early Town Records of New York; […]), volume 1, New York, N.Y.: The Historical Records Survey, June 1940, pages 181–182

   1 more example

   That the Gilbert tract, according to his opinion and the law, ought to have been oblonged up the creek. That by oblonging it across the creek, it afforded Elijah Robertson, who superintended the surveying, an opportunity of laying a warrant not located there, for himself, and thereby takes 5,000 acres.

   1818, John Haywood, “Childress versus Holland. Whyte, Judge, delivered the opinion of himself and Judge Roane.”, in Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Court of Errors and Appeals of the State of Tennessee, from the Year 1816 to 1817, volume III, Knoxville, Tenn.: […] Heiskell & Brown, page 276

2. transitiveTo give an oblong shape to.

   A. Why, by dropping them off of cars or dropping them off of trucks or some way it would oblong them .

   1928, New York Supreme Court, page 2149

   3 more examples

   His silhouette: broad shoulders, big legs, a square face oblonged by a crest of thick hair and almost lantern jaw.

   2006, Nancy Zafris, Lucky Strike, page 165

   And there were suddenly berries where there had been none before, bright red and bright blue, all with a careless water drop oblonging their form.

   2008, Gary D. Schmidt, Trouble, New York, N.Y.: Clarion Books, →ISBN, page 287

   […] the venue (a private country club nestled in the woods outside Cincinnati, with a dance hall whose ceilings went straight to the moon), to the ice cubes (truly cubed, not oblonged or crushed, and king-sized cubes for the bourbon rocks),

   2020, Elizabeth Ames, The Other's Gold