"package store"

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:03 PM +0100 9/1/00, Lynne Murphy wrote:
>I notice that the AHD doesn't have it as a regionalism, but the
>definition make no reference to any laws that would have to hold in a
>region in order for its liquor stores to be called 'package stores'.
>If we imagine that use of 'package store' is found in a checkerboard
>pattern across America, and in the places where they don't use
>'package store', they don't understand it, is 'package store' a
>regionalism?  I'd say yes, and perhaps we could even say it's many
>regionalisms (because it's used in many regions).  But say the
>opposite parts of the checkerboard say 'liquor store'--is that a
>regionalism?  It's understood by the 'package store' people because
>its meaning is compositional, but it's not used by them.

Have we established this?  I thought previous posters who grew up
with "package store" all acknowledged that they ALSO were familiar
with "liquor store", whether or not they thought of the two as
interchangeable.  I'm not entirely willing to concede that "liquor
store" is compositional either--at least in places like New York
where liquor stores also sell wine, but where 'wine' isn't
necessarily a hyponym of 'liquor'.