land-shark

land-shark (third-person singular simple present land-sharks, present participle land-sharking, simple past and past participle land-sharked)

1. To move along the ground in a sinuous fashion similar to the way a shark swims.
   • 2000, Cycle World - Volume 39, pages 2000-59:

     Staffer Mark Hoyer (riding a Suzuki Hayabusa for unfair, incoherent contrast) and I would land-shark our way through the mountain roads near Mount Palomar for a full day of riding.

   • 2010, Keith R. A. DeCandido, Command And Conquer: Tiberium Wars:

     Brodeur and Vega land-sharked their way through the crowds, eventually finding their way to the front door.

   • 2017, A.R. Moler, Inches of Trust:

     There's a few in the basement, including the Saturn V that land sharked last time I launched it.

2. (intransitive) To engage in land-sharking; to rapaciously acquire large amounts of land in order to sell it off at extremely high profits.
   • 1886, Victoria. Parliament, Parliamentary Debates - Volume 52, page 1019:

     The honorable member took up the land question because it was popular, but at one time he land-sharked the country right and left.

   • 1952, The Chicago Jewish Forum - Volume 11, Issues 2-4, page 155:

     With roll-top desks, back to back, they land-sharked their way to a fortune.

3. (transitive) To sell (someone) land at an exorbitant price.
   • 1867, South Australia. Parliament, Debates in the Houses of Legislature, page 27:

     In the District of Victoria, for instance, if a man wished to obtain possession of a section near his own he could not get it there; and if he came to Adelaide he was land-sharked.

   • 1871 May 6, Gashunts, “Cotton Versus Buckskin”, in The United States Army and Navy Journal, volume 8, number 39, page 603:

     Their cost is trifling in the East, and dear at interior stations in the West, where a soldier is "land-sharked" by traders at the rate of from $10 to $20 per month, and more if he be an opulent individual.

land-shark (plural land-sharks)

1. Alternative form of landshark
   • 1881, History of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, page 118:

     They determined to drive the land-sharks out, let the consequences be what they might.

   • 2022, Ned Fletcher, The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi, page 390:

     The 'supreme Legislature' might provide a remedy by dispossessing settlers by retrospective legislation, but 'once the whole country shall have been possessed by land-sharks, by those private purchasers from the natives', there would be huge practical difficulties in effecting any such dispossession.