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land-office business
[ land-aw-fis, -of-is ]
noun
- a lively, booming, expanding, or very profitable business.
land-office business
noun
- informal.a booming or thriving business
Word History and Origins
Origin of land-office business1
Idioms and Phrases
A thriving, expanding, or very profitable concern or volume of trade. For example, After the storm they did a land-office business in snow shovels and rock salt . This term, dating from the 1830s, alludes to the throng of applicants to government land offices through which Western lands were sold. It has been used for other booming business since the mid-1800s.Example Sentences
A publisher (p. 347)once confided to me that he was doing a "land-office business" selling "slightly damaged stock."
When the troubles of 1860-61 rose I was literally doing "a land-office business," with money galore and to spare.
The excursions ran coaches, parlor-cars, dining-cars and sleeping-cars, and did a land-office business.
We could not afford to lose our claim, so I concentrated on my Land Office business.
“They seem to be doing a land-office business,” observed Walter.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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