In British English, a building or part of a building where goods are sold is usually called a shop. Are there any shops near here? In American English, this kind of building is usually called a store, and shop is only used to mean a very small store that has just one type of goods. Mom has gone to the store.
It seems to be something to do with America being very business centered as in "this is a place for our retailers to store their items to sell", whereas in Britain it would be more "this is a place for our population to shop for things that they need".
The nouns shop and store are used somewhat differently in American and British English. In general, Americans use store the way the British use shop — to describe any room or building where people can buy things or pay for a service.
The American English word store means the same thing but comes from the idea of a business that has a store of goods to be bought. The term shop is also used in American English but more to describe a specialised shop that sells particular products, like a Butcher's shop that sells meat.
"shop" means any premises that sell retail goods, often of a single kind such as electrical goods, clothes, groceries etc. "Store" tends to mean a larger establishment that is divided into sections and sells several types of goods. ... A small retail store or a specialty department in a large store.
5 Ways British and American Grocery Stores Are Very Different
How is shop spelled in the UK?
In British English, "shop" is the standard spelling and "shoppe" is not commonly used. The use of "shoppe" is more associated with older or archaic forms of English, and it is not a standard part of contemporary British English.
The history of grocery begins with a dealer who sold by the gross—that is, in large quantities at discounted retail prices. A grocer in medieval England was a wholesaler, and the name is derived from an Anglo-French word having the same meaning, groser.
In the United Kingdom, terms in common usage include "supermarket" (for larger grocery stores), "corner shop", "convenience shop", or "grocery" (meaning a grocery shop) for smaller stores. "Grocery store", being a North American term, is not used.
Yankee is sometimes abbreviated as “Yank.” People from all over the world, including Great Britain, Australia, and South America, use the term to describe Americans. (In Spanish, it's spelled yanqui.) Sometimes, it's a negative description.
Fridge is commonly used in the U.S. I say fridge more often than refrigerator—as do most of the people I know. We would generally only say refrigerator in a more formal situation.
In British English a receipt is a piece of paper that you get in a shop when you buy something, but in American English the more usual term for this is sales slip.
In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is often used to mean "supermarket". The supermarket typically has places for fresh meat, fresh produce, dairy, deli items, baked goods, and similar foodstuffs.
A confectionery store (more commonly referred to as a sweet shop in the United Kingdom, a candy shop or candy store in North America, or a lolly shop in Australia and New Zealand) is a store that sell confectionery, whose intended targeted marketing audiences are children and adolescents.
During our visits in February 2023, we found that prices in the grocery stores were relatively affordable. However, some items, like eggs, were significantly cheaper in the UK and, overall, our shopping list would cost us far less in the UK. Here's a closer look at what we found.
In the U.K., such complexes are considered shopping centres (Commonwealth English: shopping centre), though "shopping center" covers many more sizes and types of centers than the North American "mall".
In post-alveolar region, we have another sibilant /ʃ/ (the SH sound), so the /s/ changes its place of articulation from alveolar to post-alveolar and becomes /ʃ/. That's why you pronounce it [ˈgrəʊʃɹi] (GROSHERY) in fast speech.
Back in the “old” days, goods were transported by ship to local ports. The products were then put in the “store,” on shelves literally to store the products. “The Store” = Storage. Some thousand years later, surprisingly many stores are still just that – products sitting on the shelves as storage.
It comes from a mix of Old French, German and Old English. Eschoppe from Old French (meaning booth), Schopf from German (meaning porch), and Shippon from Old English (meaning cattle shed). So the first usage of the word can be traced to mean a booth or porch where cattle was bought and sold.
The truth is, lorry in American English is truck. The British lorry is almost the same as the American truck, and the two words have morphed into synonyms of each other.
