1596. Shakspeare, Merry Wives, iii., 2. I can never hit one’s name.
1773. O. Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer. Ecod, I have hit it. It’s here. Your hands. Yours and yours, my poor sulky! My boots there, ho! Meet me two hours hence at the bottom of the garden.
1880. A. Trollope, The Duke’s Children, ch. lii. He dressed himself in ten minutes, and joined the party as they had finished their fish. ‘I am awfully sorry,’ he said, rushing up to his father, ‘but I thought that I should just hit it.’
To hit off, verb. phr. (colloquial).—To agree together; to fit; to describe with accuracy and precision.
1857. A. Trollope, Barchester Towers, ch. xxxiv. It is not always the case that the master, or warden, or provost, or principal can hit it off exactly with his tutor. A tutor is by no means indisposed to have a will of his own.
1880. A. Trollope, The Duke’s Children, ch. xxxvi. ‘One gentleman with another, you mean?’ ‘Put it so. It don’t quite hit it off, but put it so.’
1886. J. S. Winter, Army Society. ‘Sidelight,’ ch. xiv. ‘Hey!’ said Orford. ‘Didn’t you and he hit it off?’
1889. Daily News, 22 Oct., p. 5. The nations that quarrel are the nations that do not hit it off on some point of feeling or taste.
To hit the flat, verb. phr. (American cowboy).—To go out on the prairie. [[319]]
To hit the pipe, verb. phr. (American).—To smoke opium.