land-office business
1
8.6
- noun
- Archaic
:
negocio próspero
- After the announcement of the festival, the local restaurants began doing land-office business, serving more customers than ever.
- do land-office business
Examples
-
The Chazen's imported exhibition from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, "Offering of the Angels," is doing land-office business.
Blog text (25) -
The small cafe has been doing a land-office business ever since they introduced their new dessert menu.
-
During the sale, the electronics store was doing land-office business, with customers lining up outside the door.
Antonyms
How Profitable
- Informal
5
4.1
- Archaic
1
8.6
105
5.6
191
3.8
27
3.3
695
2.1
Surface Forms
Morphology
land-office + business
Although the words 'land', 'office' and 'business' are individually transparent, the compound 'land-office' is an archaic, culture-specific referent (an office for selling public land) and the idiomatic extension to mean 'very brisk/profitable trade' is not predictable from the parts. A B1 learner who knows the constituents would not reliably infer the metaphorical sense without prior exposure, so the expression is opaque.
Etymology
Land-office business may come from old U.S. places called land offices, where the government sold lots of land fast to settlers and the offices were very busy. So land-office business now means 'very large and profitable' sales or trade.