oblong (and a bit about ovals)

Ben Zimmer forwarded me this post from Threads, in which the writer Ruth Ware finds a transatlantic difference between AmE and BrE interpretations of oblong.(If you don't know what she means by "'frown' all over again", see this old post!)Where oblong startedOblong derives from Latin oblongus, meaning 'of greater length than breadth, elongated' (OED). So, you can already see that what Ware is calling the US meaning is in tune with the etymology. The Oxford English Dictionary's definition indicates (with 'esp.') that it has come to specifically refer to rectangles. It's a word whose meaning has narrowed with use. 1.a.?a1425–Elongated (usually as a deviation from an exact square or circular form); esp. rectangular with the adjacent sides unequal.The more particular interpretation, then, is oblong = non-square rectangle. That seems a bit redundant from my American perspective because everyone who knows the word oblong probably already knows the word rectangle, and only in geometry…