> as lemmas

1941 N. Coward Blithe Spirit i. ii. 50 The whole thing's a put up job—I must say, though, she shoots a more original line than they generally do.

1942 Penguin New Writing 13 24 Occasionally..it publishes a serious article... But this is regarded as a ‘bind’,..while its author is invariably dismissed as a ‘line shooter’, i.e. a conceited person.

1942 Penguin New Writing 13 24 The other day..our C.O. introduced a discussion on tactical evasion by saying: ‘I do not want this to develop into a “line-shooting” competition.’

1942 R.A.F. Jrnl. 30 May 17 For keeping up the spirits, line-shooting is at least as good as beer-drinking.

1942 R.A.F. Jrnl. 30 May 17 The man who shoots a heavy line about the work he is doing is probably very keen on his job.

1943 J. L. Hunt & A. G. Pringle Service Slang 44 Lineshoot, a tall story.

1944 G. Netherwood Desert Squadron i. 2 Some of the chaps also came from other well known fighter units. From the ‘line-shooting’ that ensued, one would think that the squadron which was then in the process of formation could never hope to be as well known as the one they had left—and so on and so forth.

1944 T. H. Wisdom Triumph over Tunisia 121 One of the most thorough and decisive of the air operations in the whole campaign was carried out by the Hurri-bombers. And this is no squadron line-shoot.

1946 G. Gibson Enemy Coast Ahead 144 These things were happening every night, so there was nothing to shoot a line about.

1951 M. Kennedy Lucy Carmichael vii. iv. 377 When Melissa shoots a line..don't protest or argue. Take it up and embroider it.

1952 T. Rattigan Deep Blue Sea i. 38 Funny thing about gongs... They don't mean a damn thing in war—except as a line-shoot, but in peace time they're quite useful.

1958 Times Lit. Suppl. 3 Oct. 564/2 A champion shooter of lines. In a party of outstanding climbers and travellers he could be relied on to cap any story.

1960 Times 19 July 18/4 One must bear in mind that what his Lordship had called..‘shooting a line’ was not necessarily inconsistent with a genuine belief.

1960 V. Gielgud To Bed at Noon i. xi. 73 He believed Tom to have been line-shooting as far as his swimming prowess was concerned.

1973 Listener 15 Mar. 342/1 [He] was an awful line-shooter. He claimed to have been at Oxford, but..he hadn't been at Oxford.

1973 Times 20 Sept. 20/8 He was awarded (his friends thought inadequately) the MBE by the British and by the French the Croix de Guerre. He never shot a line about his escapades but made them into entertaining stories.