Emily in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is married to a native Dutch speaker, who points out that they buy groceries in a store, so why doesn’t grocery denote just one of those items and not the store where they’re sold? Originally, the French...
How long can a newly married woman be called a bride? Does bride apply only as long as her wedding day, or does it extend right on through the couple’s silver anniversary and beyond? Plus, insightful advice about writing from a Pulitzer...
Polly from Issaquah, Washington, grew up in Washington, D.C., where she and her family used the term food store to mean “grocery store.” However, a friend from the Midwest teases her about this. Does anyone else call a grocery store a...
What do you call the wheeled contraption that you push around the grocery store? Shopping cart? Shopping carriage? Shopping wagon? Buggy? A former Kentuckian wonders if anyone besides her calls them bascarts. Check out this dialect map featuring...
Kro-ghetto n.—Gloss: A supermarket in the Kroger chain of stores. «They leave no class behind, ranging from the luxuriously large Whole Foods version to the one-dollar polyester deal available at the grocery store in my neighborhood...
banana-box grocer n.— «Some reclamation centers then sell these goods to brokers, which hawk them to small salvage stores. The goods are typically contained in boxes that once carried bananas, so these smaller operations are often called...