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

[Baker, John]

        I lived in eastern Massachusetts for most of the 1980s and 1990s
and had no idea that "spa" meant a grocery.  I was somewhat familiar
with the Montrose Spa but supposed the name to be idiosyncratic.


John Baker

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Barbara Need
Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2011 9:27 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "spa" = 'neighborhood grocery store', aka 'convenience
store'?

I lived in MA in the 1970s, but I don't remember ever seeing  a
grocery store with _spa_ in its name. I was north of Boston. Is this
more localized than has been suggested?

Barbara

Barbara Need
Ithaca

On 1 Mar 2011, at 8:16 AM, Amy West wrote:

> On 3/1/11 12:02 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
>> From:    "Joel S. Berson"<Berson at ATT.NET>
>>
>> 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.

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