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🏪 A food store 🛒 Food items
grocery

grocery

254 1.0
Food and other items you buy for your home
  • noun
  • /ˈɡroʊsəri/
: comestible
  • In those days, $25 a month was enough to pay rent and buy groceries for a small family.
  • buy groceries
  • go grocery shopping
  • get groceries

So every time I unload groceries, I comment to myself.

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Examples

  • When we were in Utah, I bought all the groceries twice.

    The Basement Yard

  • All right, now let's just get all of these groceries and start cooking.

  • I mean, this is the whole grocery haul, OK?

    Good Mythical Morning

  • Boy, oh, boy, carry these groceries to the car.

    The 85 South Comedy Show

  • Allows you to buy groceries on your phone.

  • I give you the groceries, and you give me the money.

    Academic text (2018)

  • I had to go get some groceries.

    Gable and Lombard (1976)

  • So I went to the shop, I got some groceries and I also caught cigarettes.

  • I hadn't been out of the apartment in weeks, except to buy groceries and cigarettes.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • I went to the market to buy some grocery items for dinner.

Synonyms

grub
vsgrocery
  • Informal
40 7.5

Food or a meal that is simple and filling

is the neutral retail term for items bought for household consumption
foodstuff
vsgrocery
13 3.2

A basic food people eat or sell, like rice

refers to items sold for household use rather than only raw ingredients
packaged goods
vsgrocery
1 2.5

Items sold in boxes, cans, or bottles to keep them fresh, often food

includes household items sold loose or packaged, not limited to prepacked goods

Compounds

grocery store
  • US
253 1.0

A shop that sells food and other everyday items

grocery list
  • US
14 1.0

A written or mental list of food and other items to buy at the store

grocery bag
14 1.0

A paper or plastic container people use to carry food and other items from a store

grocery boy
  • Archaic
2 2.0

A boy or young man who delivers food and other items from a shop

Surface Forms

grocery singular
groceries plural

Morphology

grocery = grocer (semi-transparent) = grocer + y

The sense 'an item of food' is a metonymic extension from 'grocer's goods' rather than a literal morphological composition.

Etymology

Grocery also means an item of food or household goods, and this meaning comes from the same idea of goods sold in 'bulk' by a grocer. So when you say 'groceries' you mean the food and things you buy at a grocery shop.