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country store

country store

3 2.7
A small shop in the countryside that sells food and home goods
  • noun
  • /ˈkʌntri stɔr/
  • US
translation icon : tienda de campo
  • On our road trip, we stopped at a charming country store to buy snacks and drinks for the journey.

And there was a country store owned by the man that owned the land that we lived on.

Examples

  • The survey asked: "Why are you interested in supporting the country store?"

    Academic text (2018)
  • Vermont's historic preservation community has recognized the importance of country stores to the functioning and cultural reproduction of rural communities.

    Academic text (2018)
  • And there was a country store owned by the man that owned the land that we lived on.

  • Now, you run on down to the country store and get us some butter.

  • Little has been written about country stores in contemporary rural America.

    Academic text (2018)
  • How country stores function within these diverse rural communities is the subject of this research.

    Academic text (2018)
  • In some towns, the country store played a critically important role, as Kent described.

    Academic text (2018)
  • He'd never finished high school, then worked for twenty years in his father's country store.

    Fiction book (2000)
  • The country stores analyzed in this research clearly perform a large and diverse set of functions.

    Academic text (2018)
  • Spicer had presided over small cases for years, in the back of his family's country store.

    Fiction book (2000)

Synonyms

grocery store
vscountry store
  • US
248 1.0

A shop that sells food and other everyday items

offers a broader variety beyond mainly food for the local community
general store
vscountry store
16 2.1

A shop in a small town that sells many everyday things

is the same concept but more tied specifically to rural areas
trading post
vscountry store
7 3.7

A small store in a remote place where people buy or sell goods

focuses on selling goods to locals rather than being a trade center

How Rural

country store
  • US
3 2.7
shop
1.0

Surface Forms

country store singular

Morphology

country + store

The meaning 'a retail shop in a rural area' is directly and compositionally derived from 'country' (rural area) + 'store' (shop). This noun-noun compound follows a common, cross-linguistic pattern of location/attribute + place and would be immediately comprehensible to a B1 learner who knows both constituents.

Etymology

Country store comes from the simple picture of one small store in the country where locals bought everything from food to tools and met to share news. That's why it now means 'a shop in a rural area that sells a wide variety of goods'.