across lots

• Rhymes: -ɒts

across lots

1. Alternative form of cross lots (“via a shortcut”)
   • 1838, Joseph Clay Neal, “Fydget Fyxington”, in Charcoal Sketches‎, Book One, Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, published 1865, page 221:

     You're a leveller I see, and wouldn't mind knocking me down flat as a pancake, if so be you could run away and get out of this scrape — you're a 'grarium, and would cut across the lot like a streak of lightning if you had a chance.

   • 1848, James Russell Lowell, “The Two Gunners”, in The Biglow Papers:

     An' jest ez they wuz settin' down / To take their noonin', Joe looked roun' / And see (acrost lots in a pond / That warn't mor'n twenty rod beyond) / A goose that on the water sot / Ez ef awaitin' to be shot.

   • 1857 July 26, Brigham Young, Sermon at the Bowery in Salt Lake City:

     I swore in Nauvoo, when my enemies were looking me in the face, that I would send them to hell across lots if they meddled with me; and I ask no more odds of all hell today!

   • 1899, Alice Brown, “A Last Assembling”, in Tiverton Tales:

     She chose to go 'cross lots, not because in this case it was nearer than the road, but because it seemed impossible to go another way.

• crosslots