as the crow flies
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
in a straight line, without considering obstacles
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
theo đường thẳng, không tính đến chướng ngại vật
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: the path a crow would take when flying
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
I knew the paths well and it was a journey of a few kilometres as the crow flies or, as they say in Italy, a volo d'uccello.
So maybe it took one minute more than it should as the crow flies.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “as the crow flies” mean?
in a straight line, without considering obstacles Literally: the path a crow would take when flying
Is “as the crow flies” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.