> as lemmas

1426 J. Lydgate tr. G. de Guileville Pilgrimage Life Man 21779 That lyne ryht shal lede the To the place..Wych thow hast..souht.

1625 N. Carpenter Geogr. Delineated i. ii. 15 All earthly bodies are by a right line carried and directed to the Center of the Terrestriall Globe.

1626 F. Bacon Sylua Syluarum §224 Sounds that move in oblique and arcuate lines.

1637 H. Hexham True & Briefe Relation Famous Seige of Breda 15 This night also the line of Communication, was begun betweene the French and the English.

1643 Acts & Ordinances Interregnum (1911) 321 The City of Westminster, the Borough of Southwarke, and other parts of the Counties of Middlesex and Surrey within the Forts and Lines of Communication.

c1660 J. Evelyn Diary anno 1642 (1955) II. 80 I went from Wotton to Lond, to see the so much celebrated line of Communication.

1690 J. Child Disc. Trade ii. 66 The City of London and Westminster, Burrough of Southwark, and all other places within the usual Lines of Communication.

1739 J. Bancks Short Crit. Rev. Polit. Life O. Cromwell viii. 167 The bay was..united by a line of communication from one fort to another.

1748 B. Robins & R. Walter Voy. round World by Anson ii. vii. 213 This would have carried us in a direct line to the Island of Quibo.

1780 W. Cowper Progress of Error 574 Though..the shaft..err but little from the intended line.

1792 G. Hanger Anticipation Freedom of Brabant 46 I know full well that twenty thousand men, or at most twenty-five thousand, are sufficient to act on any enemy's line of communication.

1802 C. James New Mil. Dict. Lines of communication, are trenches that unite one work to another..: thence the whole intrenchment round any place is sometimes called a line of communication, because it leads to all the works.

1819 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. 5 737 Lying in a diagonal direction across the line of march.

1859 J. R. Bartlett Dict. Americanisms (ed. 2) Line, the route of a stage-coach, railroad, packet, or steamer.

1863 A. W. Kinglake Invasion of Crimea II. 193 The neck of country by which he keeps up his communications with the base is called the ‘line of operations’.

1872 B. Stewart Elem. Physics (1876) ii. 3 You must know..the direction or line in which I am moving.

1888 Encycl. Brit. XXIV. 346/1 A system..by which along a regular chain of posts, or ‘line of communications’, an army received its supplies of food, [etc.].

1895 I. Zangwill Master i. vii. 82 They ran on parallel lines that never met.

1899 Westm. Gaz. 16 Nov. 5/2 Inspector-General of Lines of Communication.

1900 A. Conan Doyle Great Boer War 201 One dashing raid carried out by a detachment from Methuen's line of communications.

1925 R. H. Mottram Sixty-Four, Ninety-Four! 228 Some lines-of-communication Head-quarters.

1959 Listener 12 Nov. 820/1 Duchamp's activity, progressively destroying all the old lines of communication.

1992 S. Verona Mil. Occup. & Diplomacy i. ii. 34 With regard to maintaining the Soviet lines of communication through Romania, for example, these documents imply that Moscow could not be basing its choice on routes and logistics.