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oblong

UK/ˈɒblɒŋ/US/ˈɑblɔŋ/
adjectiveB12 meaningsVery rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechmostly written

Oblong means longer than it is wide. A rectangle that has been stretched — a brick, a door, a bar of chocolate.

It is a rectangle with a condition attached: every oblong is a rectangle, but a square is not an oblong, because a square is not longer one way than the other. Primary schools teach the pair together for exactly that reason. The word works as a noun as well — cut the pastry into oblongs — and it will stretch to a squashed circle too, which is more properly an ellipse. Where a mathematician might say rectangular, everyday description reaches for oblong.

Definitions of oblong

  1. 1adjectiveoblongLonger than it is wide, in the shape of a stretched rectangle.B1

    “The garden is a narrow oblong strip.”

  2. 2nounshapeA shape that is longer than it is wide.B1

    “Cut the pastry into six oblongs.”

Where it comes from

  1. Latin

    oblongus

  2. Middle English

    oblong

  3. English, today

    oblong

From Middle English oblong, oblonge, borrowed from Latin oblongus.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 28 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word