Word.ws English Dictionary

as the crow flies

as the crow flies adverb: in a straight line distance between two locations, as opposed to the road distance or over land distance.

Adverb

as the crow flies (not comparable)

  1. (idiomatic) In a straight line distance between two locations, as opposed to the road distance or over land distance.
    • It is 15 kilometers as the crow flies.
    • ʽFire,ʼ said Bill, ʽin the form of a common cowshed, is burnin' about nor'-nor'-east as the crow flies.ʼ1918, Norman Lindsay, The Magic Pudding, page 54

as the crow flies meaning in Bengali and Vietnamese

as the crow flies in Bengali

রাস্তা, ভূমির দূরত্বের বিপরীতে

as the crow flies in Vietnamese

in a straight line
theo đường chim bay

Examples of as the crow flies in a sentence

  • The distance from Sarajevo to Ploce is 75 miles as the crow flies, but because of the difficult terrain the new line is 120 miles long.1964 April, “Beyond the Channel: Jugoslavia: New line to Adriatic”, in Modern Railways, page 281:
  • Then it told me the distance between the two is 331 miles, which is totally irrelevant as that's as the crow flies and not the 393 miles of the rail route.2020 April 22, Barry Doe, “Disappointed at lack of information on LNER website”, in Rail, page 65:

Synonyms of as the crow flies

Origin of as the crow flies

From the fact that while crows fly to their source of food, their flight bypasses obstacles like rivers and terrain. Compare beeline.

Questions about as the crow flies

What does as the crow flies mean?
As the crow flies means in a straight line distance between two locations, as opposed to the road distance or over land distance.
What is as the crow flies in Bengali?
As the crow flies in Bengali is রাস্তা, ভূমির দূরত্বের বিপরীতে. See As the crow flies meaning in Bengali.
How do you use as the crow flies in a sentence?
The distance from Sarajevo to Ploce is 75 miles as the crow flies, but because of the difficult terrain the new line is 120 miles long.
What part of speech is as the crow flies?
As the crow flies is an adverb.

Words near as the crow flies in the dictionary

  1. as sure as eggs are eggs
  2. as sure as eggs is eggs
  3. as the actress said to the bishop
  4. as the bishop said to the actress
  5. as the case may be
  6. as the crow flies
  7. as the day is long
  8. as the fella said
  9. as the fella says
  10. as the gull flies
  11. as the man said

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: as the crow flies (page history and authors); as the crow flies (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-as the crow flies.ogg.

Cite this entry: “as the crow flies.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/as_the_crow_flies. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.