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A section for all you budding etymologists where each week the origin of a word or phrase is investigated.
This week it is..... As the crow flies
In a direct line, without any of the detours caused by
following a road.
The allusion in this expression is obviously to the
ability of crows to fly directly from A to B, without
the encumbrances of roads and landscape features
that restrict man. Crows are perhaps an odd choice
as, unlike many birds that migrate over long distances,
their flight isn’t especially straight. Crows normally fly
in large wheeling arcs, looking for food.
The earliest known citation of the phrase, which
explicitly defines its meaning, comes in The London
Review Of English And Foreign Liturature, by W.
Kenrick - 1767:
The Spaniaad [sic], if on foot, always travels as
the crow flies, which the openness and dryness of
the country permits; neither rivers nor the steepest
mountains stop his course, he swims over the one and
scales the other.
The term ‘the crow road’ has long been used in Scotland
to denote the most direct route. It has also been used
there latterly to indicate death, which is the meaning
alluded to in Iain Banks’ 1992 eponymous novel. This
term is contemporary with ‘as the crow flies’ and is
cited in the 1795 Statistical Account of Scotland, where
a turnpike, or ‘crow road’, was suggested as a means of
reducing the costs of road maintenance, by eliminating
numerous winding roads:
One of which improvements is evident to the most
careless observer; viz. in cutting a line of road from
Campsie kirk to the Crow road.
Related expression: Make a bee-line for
Go directly towards.
The phrase derives from the behaviour of bees. When a
forager bee finds a source of nectar it returns to the hive
and communicates its location to the other bees, using
a display called the Waggle Dance. The other bees are
then able to fly directly to the source of the nectar, that
is, ‘make a beeline’ for it. This dance is a surprisingly
sophisticated means of communication for a creature
with such a small brain. The forager bee performs a
short wiggling run - hence the name, with the angle
denoting the direction of the nectar-laden flowers and
the length of time denoting the distance.
The phrase is American and all the early citations of
it come from the USA. The earliest found is from The
Davenport Daily Leader, January 1808:
“Gustav Stengel Sr., of Rock Island, was thrown from
his sleigh on Third Avenue in that city yesterday
afternoon, the horse becoming frightened and turning
abruptly, ripping the cutter. The horse made a bee line
for home.”
Given the colloquial usage in that citation, the figurative
phrase and certainly the original literal meaning of beeline must have been in use for some time at that date.
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