long-line, long line
1. A deep-sea fishing-line.
| 1876 Rep. Crab & Lobster Fisheries Scot. App. i. 15 Every third hook on the long lines is baited with crabs. 1883 Fisheries Exhib. Catal. (ed. 4) 176 Long Lines, Hand Lines,..Deep Sea Lines. 1883 G. B. Goode Fish. Industry U.S.A. 13 (Fish. Exhib. Publ.) The much more general use of the trawl-line or long-line. |
b. attrib. Furnished with or using long-lines.
| 1877 Holdsworth Sea Fisheries 79 Dog⁓fish are the great enemies of the long-line fishermen. 1894 Pall Mall G. 5 Dec. 3/1 Scotch long-line boats were lent early this year to the Donegal fishermen, who were encouraged to fish further out. |
2. A line of manuscript or type that runs across the page without columnar division. Also (with hyphen) attrib.
| 1755 Advt. in Whole Duty Man, A Long-line Octavo Common-Prayer. 1849 Ticknor Sp. Lit. III. 16 The old long-line stanza. 1914 E. A. Loew Beneventan Script xi. 289 The oldest extant Beneventan MSS. are written in long lines and not in two or more columns. 1939 W. H. P. Hatch Princ. Uncial Manuscripts New Testament 17 It was soon found that a wide column and a long line are more convenient for the reader. 1964 Dean & Legge Rule of St. Benedict p. xviii, The Douce Rule has thirty long lines to the page. |
3. In Old English verse, two half-lines considered as a unit. Cf. G. langzeile.
| 1868 W. W. Skeat in Hales & Furnivall Bp. Percy's Folio MS. III. p. xxiv, There has been much discussion as to whether alliterative poems should be printed in couplets of short lines, or in long lines comprising two sections. 1877 H. Rehrmann Essay concerning Anglo-Saxon Poetry 9 All words of a long line are fit for alliteration that distinguish themselves in the verse by natural gravity or grammatical accent. 1929 W. E. Leonard in Malone & Ruud Studies Eng. Philol. in Honor of F. Klaeber 7 The law of the meter remains, an eight-beat long-line. 1970 Rev. Eng. Studies XXI. 133 The metrical division between two verses (hemistichs) of an alliterative long line. |
Hence long-lining, fishing with long-lines.
| 1877 Holdsworth Sea Fisheries 71 Long-lining from Grimsby is worked by means of large smacks. 1885 St. James's Gaz. 28 Feb. 4/2 Three fishermen have been drowned at Scarborough while long-lining. |