get to grass

present singular third person gets to grass · participle present getting to grass · past got to grass · UK participle past got to grass · US participle past gotten to grass

1. businessTo leave a mine and get to the surface, particularly to escape an underground disaster.

   “Come along. No fear of the water coming in, or I'd soon say let's get to grass.”

   1896, George Manville Fenn, Sappers and Miners; The Flood beneath the Sea, chapter 42, “Mining Matters”

   2 more examples

   Men working at deep mines started work after a long and tiring descent, and near the end of their shift they held back on their effort, so they would have enough energy left to “get to grass.”

   1991, Larry Lankton, “The Underground: Change and Continuity”, in Cradle to Grave: Life, Work, and Death at the Lake Superior Copper Mines, chapter 2, page 33

   But love was no protection in the terror and the din When the island gave its answer, the day the sea broke in I heard the shouted warning, I tried to get to grass But the ladders jammed with miners, there was no room to pass I never was a sailor but I met a sailor's death Ninety feet below the ocean, I drew that dying breath

   2003, Tom Bliss, song “The Silverlode of Sark”, from album Downhill All the Way