The word shop has yielded to the word store, by degrees, until Prof. Freeman’s comment (1883) is fully justified.
[1768. Abigail Whitney advertises goods for sale “at her shop in Union-Street.”—Boston Ev. Post, May 2.]
[1769. Bethiah Oliver, vegetable seeds, &c. “to be sold at her Shop opposite the Rev. Dr. Sewall’s Meeting-House in Boston.”—Id., March 13.]
[1769. Elizabeth Greenleaf deals in the same, “at her Shop near the end of Union-Street over against the Blue-Ball.”—Id., March 20.]
1773. As cheap as can be bought at any store or shop in town.—Advt., Mass. Spy, June 3.
1774. Wants a place, as a Clerk in a Store, a young Man.—Mass. Gazette, Nov. 21.
[1774. John McKowen, from Glasgow, has removed to a Shop next door to Dr. Clark’s.—Id., same column.]
1790. The words Shop and Store are confounded in our common practice. This trouble might be spared, by using the words according to their true sense, viz.: shop, for the apartment or building where goods are retailed; and store or warehouse for a building where goods are deposited in bulk.—Gazette of the U.S., Phila., Oct. 13: from the American Mercury.
1791. He went out of the house, saying that he was going to the store to bed.—Id., Aug. 3.
1800. “Shoe store. No. 37, North Third Street,” advertised in The Aurora, Phila., Oct. 8.
1805. Bank influence … pervades almost every store in the city.—Corr., Balt. Ev. Post, Aug. 10, p. 2/1.
1806. You have a long bill due at Mr. ——’s store.—‘Spirit of the Public Journals,’ p. 101 (Balt.).
1817. The store-keepers, (country shopkeepers we should call them) of these western towns, visit the eastern ports of Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia, once a year, to lay in their stock of goods: an evidence it might seem to want of confidence in the merchants of those places.—M. Birkbeck, ‘Journey in America,’ p. 116 (Phila.).
1823. Mr. J. Cookson, of Bond-Street, is now in Fordham’s store [in Illinois.]—W. Faux, ‘Memorable Days in America,’ p. 289 (Lond.).
1833. A little, dapper Bostonian, who kept a store as they call it, where every shop is a store, every stick a pole, every stone a rock, every stall a factory, and every goose a swan.—John Neal, ‘The Down-Easters,’ i. 26.
1883. In America the word shop is confined to the place where things are made or done, as ‘barber-shop,’ ‘carpenter-shop;’ a place where things are sold is a ‘store.’—E. A. Freeman, ‘Impressions of the U.S.,’ p. 61.
