groceries

1. 1
   nouncountableplural

   Food and other household supplies for sale, the kinds of commodities sold by a grocer or in a grocery store.

   The delivery driver left our groceries on the front porch.

   Rising prices have pushed the cost of weekly groceries much higher.

   Similarprovisions, shopping, supplies, food

   Note

   The goods are always plural: in this meaning there is no "a grocery," only groceries. The singular survives only in front of another noun, as in a grocery list, a grocery bag or the grocery bill. Thomas Carlyle could still pair groceries with spiceries in 1850, setting them beside cotton and beef as plain goods that came in from the East and the West.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of grocery.

   Several family-run groceries still survive on the city's east side.

   Most of the old groceries gave way to large supermarket chains.

   Note

   Here the plural counts shops, not goods: two competing groceries are two stores. Number is the quick test against the plural-only "goods" meaning. This sense takes numerals and has "a grocery" in the singular, while a sack of groceries never holds one grocery. The same spelling also serves the verb form, so context decides which is meant.

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of grocery.

   Note

   The verb behind this form has two uses. Intransitively it means to go grocery shopping (she groceries on Saturdays). Transitively it means to stock someone or something with groceries (he groceries the cabin before winter). The final -y becomes -ies, as with any verb ending in a consonant plus y, which gives it the spelling it shares with the plural of the store.

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