[f. BOLT v.2 + -ING1.]
† 1. Hasty utterance, sudden blurting out. Obs.
1692. R. L’Estrange, Josephus’ Wars, I. xvii. (1733), 588. The Bolting of this Privacy made Herod stark mad.
2. A sudden starting off; making off, running away, flight; (in U.S. politics) sudden secession from a political party.
1820. Scott, Abbot, xvii. These pretty wild-geese … have as many divings, boltings, and volleyings.
1860. G. H. K., Vacat. Tour. (1861), I. 169. The bolting of the Caithness men from the Sutherland men.
1884. Gen. W. H. Russell, in N.-Y. Times, 24 June, 1/2. This caucus system of ours is a despotism, tempered only by bolting.
3. Fastening with bolts.
1856. Kane, Arct. Expl., I. vii. 74. The pintles torn from their boltings.
4. Hasty swallowing.
1872. ‘Mark Twain,’ Innoc. Abr., xii. 79. No five-minute boltings of flabby rolls.
5. Comb., as bolting-hole, a hole by which to bolt or escape; fig. a means of escape.
c. 1788. Burke, Art. W. Hastings, Wks. 1842, XIV. 68. It afforded him two bolting holes, by which he is enabled to resist the authority of the Company.
1881. Sat. Rev., No. 1321, 238. A secluded spot in a clearing, where a bank is honeycombed with burrows and bolting-holes.
