"greengrocer's apostrophe" (was Re: Cam(pb)ell)

[Bonnie Osborn Briggs]

I think this is a regional thing.  I've always heard store rather than
grocery store or supermarket.  Usually if someone is going somewhere
other that a grocery store, they call it by name, "I'm going to Target"
or I'm going to Sears".  However, there is a sticky twist to this
situation now that the new "superstores" (Wal-Mart and K-Mart) are now
selling groceries as well as the nine million other items they stock.

Bonnie Briggs
The University of Memphis

Natalie Maynor wrote:
> This interests me because I had been thinking not long ago about what
> I considered the long-ago habit of saying "the store" for "the grocery
> store."  I had come across a reference to "the store" in something
> set in the past -- part of Eudora Welty's _One Writer's Beginnings_,
> I think, and I sat there thinking "I remember when we used to say
> that."  The fact that I thought about it that way supports my feeling
> that I don't hear it used that way these days.  But you do.  What about
> others of you?
>
> I do have one friend, from various places -- his parents moved frequently
> during his childhood, who says going to "the supermarket" or buying
> whatever at "the supermarket."  I've kidded him about it and said that
> that sounded weird.  Do others of you use "supermarket" that way?
>    --Natalie Maynor (maynor at ra.msstate.edu)