Grocery

How to spell grocery

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce grocery

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does grocery mean?

1. nounFood and other household items bought from a shop, usually considered collectively.
2. nounA shop that sells food and household provisions; a grocer's store.

Grocery in a sentence

• The weekly grocery bill has risen sharply this year.

• There is a small grocery on the corner that stays open late.

• She keeps a running grocery list on the fridge door.

• He worked at the neighbourhood grocery all through college.

Where does grocery come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows out of the medieval trade in selling goods in bulk. It traces back to the Latin grossus, which literally meant 'thick, coarse, or large', the same root that gives us 'gross' in the sense of a large quantity. In Medieval Latin a grossarius was a merchant who dealt in wholesale lots rather than tiny retail amounts, and this passed into Old French and Anglo-French as someone who sold in gross. English borrowed the dealer as 'grocer' in the late 1300s, and the noun 'grocery' was later formed from it to name first the grocer's trade and shop, and then the food and household goods themselves. A handy spelling clue is that the word is simply 'grocer' with a '-y' added, so the awkward middle keeps the 'c' that sounds like an 's'.

How the word is built

• grocer (dealer in food and household goods, from grossus 'coarse, in bulk')
• -y (noun suffix for trade or goods)