land office
1
4.7
- noun
- /lænd ˈɔfɪs/
- Formal
:
oficina de tierras
- The land office processes applications for those looking to claim new parcels of land.
- land office claims
Examples
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An act of 1861 also directed the surveyor general to transmit composite swampland maps to the federal land office to facilitate state-federal cooperation.
Academic text (1994) -
It is land they have occupied for centuries, this tribe of caterpillars, since long before George Harland bought it from the federal land office for a dollar and a quarter an acre.
Fiction book (2002) -
Well, hell, could you tell me where the land office is?
-
I don't see a land office.
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I suppose you've been too busy to go into the land office and file your claim.
-
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Trading post and land office at Old West town of Buckskin Joe.
Academic text (1994) -
By the 1930s, the timber barons were gone, the government land office had closed, and most Ojibwe were poor.
Academic text (2011) -
As a young man, he had worked as a surveyor and clerk in the public land office in Washington, Mississippi, spending much of his time outside learning the lay of the Mississippi land, and more importantly, acquiring a passion to learn more.
Academic text (2017) -
This rider opened a watershed, and land offices at White Earth were nearly instantaneously flooded with paperwork for the sale of thousands of acres of land.
Academic text (2009) -
But even regrouped Orang Asli enjoy no security of tenure because they "cannot get freehold title from the State land office for land in the regroupment schemes" (Hooker 2001, 199).
Academic text (2011)
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a government office managing public land' is directly derivable from combining 'land' (territory) and 'office' (an administrative place); this noun–noun compound follows a productive, compositional pattern in English. There is no idiomatic or metaphorical shift and similar compounds exist cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both words will readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Land office comes from frontier times when a small government office kept maps and papers and sold land to settlers. Imagine people standing in line with deeds and maps at that office, so land office means 'a government office that manages and sells public land'.