Oblong means stretched out longer in one direction than the other, like a rectangle or an oval that's been elongated. Picture the difference between a circular pizza and the rectangular sheet pizza served in your school cafeteria: the sheet pizza is oblong.

Most tables are oblong rather than perfectly square or round. Your smartphone screen is oblong. A football is an oblong shape, longer from end to end than it is wide around the middle. If you draw a circle and then stretch it to make it taller, you've created an oblong shape.

You'll see it used to describe all sorts of things: oblong leaves on plants, oblong faces (longer than they are wide), or oblong windows in old buildings. In everyday conversation, people use it whenever something has that distinctive stretched-out quality, longer in one dimension than the other.