grocer, grocery, la-la land, OMG, hold up, a bad-faith lender easily swindling recipient countries

The idea that Beijing is a bad-faith lender easily swindling recipient countries was pushed relentlessly by the Trump administration. It doesn’t hold up.

Costco

has held off on offering curbside pickup for groceries for years. Now, in a shift, it's trying it out at three stores.

Grocery is the biggest category in retailing but the most resistant to the advance of online shopping. Even in Britain, where it has gone furthest, it may account for just 5% of sales this year. But it is growing fast everywhere. The Boston Consulting Group expects the global market to grow from $36 billion this year to $100 billion by 2018 http://econ.st/InKsS2

 A dictionary for warped minds
Los Angeles Times
Last week the Oxford English Dictionary announced March additions to its pages, include FYI, OMG, email (not e-mail) and La-La Land. But something it hasn't added yet are brightly colored pictures. Those can be found in "My First Dictionary" by Ross ...

OMG

Line breaks: OMG

Pronunciation: /əʊɛmˈdʒiː/

exclamation

• informal

• used to express surprise, excitement, disbelief, etc.: OMG! If my parents find out they will go mad!
  

  More example sentences

Origin

early 20th century: from the initial letters of oh my God! (the final elements may sometimes represent goodness, gosh, etc.).

grocer

Pronunciation: /ˈgrəʊsə/

Translate grocer | into French | into German | into Italian | into Spanish

noun

• a person who sells food and small household goods.

Origin:

Middle English (originally 'a person who sold things in the gross' (i.e. in large quantities)): from Old French grossier, from medieval Latin grossarius, from late Latin grossus 'gross'The first recorded usage of "OMG" came in a 1917 letter to Winston Churchill

grocery

Pronunciation: /ˈgrəʊs(ə)ri/

Translate grocery | into French | into German | into Italian | into Spanish

noun (plural groceries)

• a grocer’s shop or business.
• (groceries) items of food sold in a grocery or supermarket.

la-la land (la-la land)

noun:
1. A place or a state of being out of touch with reality.
2. A place known for frivolous activities.

Etymology
Finally, a fictional land that is named after a real place. The term la-la land is coined from the initials of the city of Los Angeles, home of Hollywood, alluding to the fictitious nature of the movies, sets, etc.

Usage
"Stockwell Day is in the la-la land of Republicans, who for decades whipped up (white) fear of (black) crime and kept building prisons across America until there was no more money to build." — Haroon Siddiqui; Harper's Ottawa Becomes Republican La-la Land; The Toronto Star (Canada); Aug 8, 2010.

La-la land

Meaning

A notional place characterized by fantasy, self-absorption and blissful lack of touch with reality.

Origin

'La-la land' isn't listed on maps, but the label does refer to a real place, that is, Los Angeles, which is of course widely referred to as L.A. The expression has taken on a meaning built partly from the place name and partly from the supposed frivolous and eccentric behaviour of the city's movie community.

The term began to be used by the general public around the late 1970s and both of the above sources of the expression are found in print in 1979:

Washington Post, 4th February - "Monday night in Lalaland is not like Monday night in, say, Washington."

Los Angeles Times, 28th July - "Heather was in la-la land after drinking the LSD-spiked iced tea intended for Diana."

Another link between the phrase and Los Angeles was the 1984 film Beverly Hills Cop. In a scene where Eddie Murphy's lead character Axel Foley was being criticised by fellow cop Jeffrey Friedman, Foley stuck his fingers in his ears and sang "la la la" to drown out the reproach:

Foley: I am not listening to you.
Jeffrey: Great. Real mature.
Foley: I am not listening to Jeffrey, but he's still talking.

That gesture became something of a cliché amongst Hollywood types for a few years.

Despite all the associations of 'la-la land' with late 20th century Los Angeles, the earliest use of the expression in print is from long ago and far away. A heading in the Los Angeles Times in January 1925 ran:

Miniature motor cars developed by French engineers amaze American government. Commerce Department motor head home again; describes one-man taxis in ‘La-La Land’.

Presumably, the author had in mind the phrase 'ooh-la-la', which was in vogue as a recent import from France into the USA in 1925, when that early form of 'La-la land' was coined. The phrase never caught on with that meaning, although it might have come in handy as an alternative to the "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" line that the The Simpsons' writer Ken Keeler used to articulate the USA's prevailing anti-French sentiment in 1995.