grocer
pronunciation
How to pronounce grocer in British English:
UK [ˈɡrəʊsə(r)]
How to pronounce grocer in American English:
US [ˈɡroʊsər]
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- Noun:
- a retail merchant who sells foodstuffs (and some household supplies)
Word Origin
- grocer
- grocer: [15] Etymologically, a grocer is simply somebody who sells ‘in gross’ – that is, wholesale. The word’s ancestor is medieval Latin grossārius ‘wholesale dealer’, a derivative of late Latin grossus ‘large, bulky’ (from which English gets gross). It passed into English via Old French grossier and Anglo-Norman grosser. In practice, the term seems largely restricted in Britain from earliest times to merchants who dealt in spices and similar imported edible goods, and as early as the mid 15th century it was being used for retailers who sold such goods in small quantities to the public. Greengrocer is an 18th-century formation.=> gross
- grocer (n.)
- early 15c. (mid-13c. as a surname), "wholesale dealer, one who buys and sells in gross," corrupted spelling of Anglo-French grosser, Old French grossier, from Medieval Latin grossarius "wholesaler," literally "dealer in quantity" (source also of Spanish grosero, Italian grosseiro), from Late Latin grossus "coarse (of food), great, gross" (see gross (adj.)). Sense of "a merchant selling individual items of food" is 16c.; in Middle English this was a spicer.
Example
- 1. Canned chiles : canned chiles can be found in your grocer 's mexican or ethnic foods section .
- 2. I got ours used from a local grocer and it held hundreds of pounds of food , so it 's strong .
- 3. There 's no pharmacy , no grocer , no gas station for miles ? These are pretty obvious missing pieces in a community .
- 4. The gross grocer crossed his legs before the boss .
- 5. Butter is a stock item for any good grocer .