[Ads-l] OED antedating -- "hop the twig"

[Robin Hamilton]

OED has, for HOP v2, Phrases, "P2.  to hop the twig: to depart, go off, or be dismissed suddenly; (also simply to hop, to hop off) to die," with citations from 1797.

The phrase can be found twelve years earlier in Francis Grose, _A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue_ (1785):

      TO HOP THE TWIG. To run away. (Cant)

Robin Hamilton

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