"spa" = 'neighborhood grocery store', aka 'convenience store'?

[Amy West]

On 3/1/11 12:02 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
> Date:    Mon, 28 Feb 2011 15:19:14 -0500
> From:    "Joel S. Berson"<Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject: "spa" = 'neighborhood grocery store', aka 'convenience store'?
>
> If anyone knows how to separate "spa" = 'neighborhood grocery store'
> from the mass of "spa" = 'watering place', I'd be interested.  It's
> an eastern New England usage (says AHD in "More word histories and
> mysteries", but without saying a word about date of origin).

One of the few times I've seen this in print was on a sign in
Southbridge, MA: it was one of those square, yellow, light-up signs that
said "X's Spa" and then there were additional signs for sodas,
groceries, etc.

Maybe check business listings categorized for groceries and search for
"spa"?

I'm betting that the origin is linked to the origin of sodas as
"tonics." It makes sense to go to a "spa" for "tonics." And some soda
fountains were at pharmacies (my father-in-law started out at the soda
jerk at his father's pharmacy in Philadelphia). When the "spa" shifts to
a convenience store, I'm not sure. But I think this early "medicinal"
origin lies at the root of the terms' semantics.

--
---Amy West

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