building supply store
- noun
- US
:
tienda de materiales de construcción
- If they know he killed his sister, which he figures they must, they seem too busy knocking down walls and arguing over whose turn it is to go to the building supply store to give it much thought.
Examples
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The building supply store had a sale on concrete mix, making it the perfect time to start the new driveway.
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You can find a wide variety of paint and tools at a building supply store for your next renovation project.
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According to the friend who sold it to us (never used), you can get all sorts of awesome wood stoves cheap at Italian building supply stores.
Blog text (24) -
The advertisement of additives in local magazines, national publications, phone solicitations, Internet ads, and TV ads, as well as their easy availability in hardware stores, building supply stores, and supermarkets, is raising questions among homeowners.
Academic text (2008) -
He found all the materials he needed to build his deck at the local building supply store.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
A place where people buy things and pay for services
100
1.0
A shop that sells tools and supplies for home repair
97
1.0
A building that holds goods until people need them
A store that sells wood, tiles, and other materials for making houses
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a store selling materials used for constructing buildings' is directly and compositionally derivable from 'building' (construction), 'supplies' (necessary items), and 'store' (shop). This straightforward noun–noun modification pattern is cross-linguistically common and follows normal English compounding, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words would readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Building supply store comes from the simple idea of a shop that sells things for making buildings: building is the house or structure and supply means the materials and tools builders need. So a building supply store is 'a shop where builders buy materials for construction'.