subs. phr. (American).—A straight line between two points: as a bee returning laden to its hive. Hence TO TAKE (or MAKE) A BEE-LINE (or air-line) = to go direct, ‘as the crow flies,’ without circumlocution. One of the American railways is popularly known as the Bee Line Road from the direct route it takes between its termini. Also straight shot (q.v.).
1841. E. G. PAIGE (‘Dow, Jr.’), Short Patent Sermons, I. 215 [BARTLETT]. Sinners, you are making a BEE-LINE from time to eternity; and what you have once passed over you will never pass again.
1842. CAROLINE M. KIRKLAND, Forest Life, I. xvi. This road is only one of Nature’s laying…. It will go most determinedly straight up and straight down the hills, and in a ‘BEE LINE,’ as we say.
1848. J. R. LOWELL, The Biglow Papers.
| The field o’ Lexin’ton where England tried | |
| The fastest colors thet she ever dyed, | |
| An’ Concord Bridge, thet Davis, when he came, | |
| Found was the BEE-LINE TRACK to heaven an’ fame. |
1849. POE, The Gold-Bug [Tales, I, 44]. A BEE-LINE, or, in other words, a straight line, drawn … to a distance of fifty feet.
1852. GROTE, History of Greece, IX, ii, lxx. 160. If we measure on Kiepert’s map … the AIR-LINE [is] … one hundred and seventy English miles.
1854. HALIBURTON (‘Sam Slick’), The Americans at Home, i. 278. I acknowledge the corn, boys, that when I started my track warn’t anythin’ like a BEE-LINE;—the sweeten’d whiskey had made me powerful thick-legged.
1856. KANE, Arctic Explorations, I, 198. We moved on like men in a dream. Our foot-marks, seen afterwards, showed that we had steered a BEE-LINE for the brig.
1870. EMERSON, Society and Solitude, x. 219, ‘Courage.’ Men who, almost as soon as they are born, take a BEE-LINE to the rack of the inquisitor.
1874. M. and F. COLLINS, Frances, v. How they could follow an enemy’s trail, or strike a BEE-LINE through unpathed woods to the point they sought!
1875. I. L. BIRD, Six Months among the … Sandwich Islands, xxix., 275 (1886). Horses cross the sand and hummocks as nearly as possible on A BEE LINE.
1882. J. HAWTHORNE, Fortune’s Fool, I, viii. This disreputable clergyman would make a BEE-LINE for Castlemere.
1884. R. ALDRIDGE, Ranch Notes, 78. The cattle are in great dread of this pest [the heel-fly], and the instant an animal feels one it … TAKES A BEE-LINE for the nearest water.
1888. St. Louis Globe Democrat, 24 Jan. The obese style once admired is now disliked. Many old English authors had too much rhetoric for our age. An author must take the AIR-LINE or we will not travel.
1888. Florida Times Union Advertisement, 11 Feb. Ask for tickets viâ Augusta or Atlanta and the Piedmont AIR LINE.
1901. A. C. GUNTER, The Deacon’s Second Wind, viii. His service eye struck a BEE LINE for the Deacon.
1901. Troddles, 180. A certain inn … in great request by yachtsmen and cyclists, we made a BEE-LINE for that.
