Bee-line

A direct line. See quot. 1848 (Drake).

1830.  The squirrel took a bee line, and reached the ground six feet ahead.—Mass. Spy, Nov. 24.

1837.  “Poor fellows!” said my guide as we descended, “poor fellows! curved lines are evidently their favorites, but I’m wonderfully afraid that some of them will before long be engaged in investigating the nature of what is vulgarly called a ‘bee line,’ drawn in the directions of their separate domicils, pointed out to them by those who stand high in authority over them, instead of a curved one taught by dame Nature.”—Yale Lit. Mag., ii. 141 (Feb.).

1841.  Guide, draw a bee-line for home, and see that you take us there by the shortest route.—Savannah Georgian, Jan. 25.

1842.  It [the road] will go determinedly straight up and straight down the hills, and in a “bee line,” as we say, through the broadest marshes, if marshes lie in the way.—Mrs. Kirkland, ‘Forest Life,’ i. 160.

1848.  Our victim struck a bee-line for the Providence Depot, reaching it just as the cars were ready to go out.—Durivage and Burnham, ‘Stray Subjects, He Wanted to See the Animal,’ p. 65.

1848.  When the bee has sucked its fill, it rises, makes two or three circuits, and then moves off in a straight, “a bee line,” to the swarm of which it is the member.—Dr. Daniel Drake, ‘Life in Kentucky,’ p. 135 (Cincinn., 1870).

a. 1849.  A bee line, or in other words a straight line.—E. A. Poe, ‘The Gold Beetle.’ (N.E.D.)

1855.  He rode his horse a hundred yards into the wood, then alighted, fastened him to a bough, and coolly took a bee-line back to the road, on the very edge of which he covered himself closely, among a clump of scrubby oaks.—W. G. Simms, ‘The Forayers,’ p. 71 (N.Y.).

1856.  Silently he arose and took a bee line for the back door, and disappeared.—Yale Lit. Mag., xxi. 157 (Feb.).

1862.  

1867.