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

[Joel S. Berson]

At 3/1/2011 08:16 AM, Amy West wrote:
Maybe check business listings categorized for groceries and search for
>"spa"?

That seems a possible way of determining localization, as Barbara
Need enquired about.  But I suspect the OED wouldn't get any useful
quotations!  (A problem with some of Bill Mullin's early citations,
suggestive as they are about dating.)

When I was searching yesterday, I did get via Google some hits that
looked like business directory listings --  "Smith's Spa" classified
as "grocery".  I'll see if I can reconstruct that.

Joel

>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
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org