land [OE] Celtic words such as Irish lann ‘enclosure’ and Welsh llan ‘enclosure, church’ are related to land, as well as the closer Dutch land and German Land. In the land of the living [E18th] is now a jokey way of saying that someone is alive or awake. The expression is biblical, occurring for example in the Book of Job: ‘Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living.’ The land of Nod is also biblical, first used punningly for the state of sleep by Jonathan Swift, who based it on the place name Nod in Genesis: ‘And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden’.