grocery

Etymology

From French grosserie (“wholesale”). Compare gross.

noun

1. (usually in the plural) Retail foodstuffs and other household supplies.
   1776: Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations Where ten thousand pounds can be employed in the grocery trade, the wages of the grocer's labour make but a very trifling addition...
   Did not cotton spin itself, beef grow, and groceries and spiceries come in from the East and the West, quite comfortably by the side of shams? 1850, Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets: The present time
2. A shop or store that sells groceries; a grocery store.
   1854: Henry David Thoreau, Walden I observed that the vitals of the village were the grocery, the bar-room, the post-office, and the bank...

verb

1. (intransitive) To go grocery shopping.
   We shopped and groceried on a cash basis, determined on that from the start. 1913, George Lee Burton, Tackling Matrimony: To the Men and Girls who Love Each Other More than Ease and Show and Sham
   The thought of grocerying so casually at Seessel's evokes a giggle from Shirley 1967, The New Yorker, volume 43, number 5, page 210
   I was dependent upon others for grocerying and getting to doctor appointments. 2012, Hazel Rae Minnick, Living in My Shadow, page 93
   Sample usage: "If you're going grocerying, pick up some GMO — you know, Goat's Milk, Organic. But it has to be non-GMO GMO."] [Jul 19, 2016, “The word of the week: grocerying”, in StarTribune.com
2. (transitive) To furnish with groceries.
   Fifty-eight years of grocerying hotels, restaurants and institutions that feed many people 1939, John Willy, Hotel Monthly, volume 47, number 550, page 59
   What freedom to be iced, fueled, and groceried for two weeks and running toward a reef you truly love 1998, Ron Rau, “Doing It for Money”, in David Seybold, editor, Seasons of the Angler: A Fisherman's Anthology, page 95