Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A retail store selling a wide variety of inexpensive articles.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun US A five-and-dime

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Short for five-and-ten-cent store.]

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Examples

  • All around, there's the too-bright sun and the bright colors that make up downtown: the greens of the grocery store signs and the reds-and-whites of the five-and-ten.

    The Town Secrets Meakin Armstrong 2011

  • One time, a five-and-ten shop failed to charge us the right price for a Halloween costume; when I pointed it out, she marched back in and gave them the rest of their money.

    Cake Boss Buddy Valastro 2010

  • People walked along listening to transistor radios because there were stations with auxiliary power and there were men wrapped in headscarves who sold flashlights and candles and there were candles in thousands of apartment windows and people on line for candles outside the five-and-ten and long lines at phone booths on every second corner.

    Underworld Don Delillo 2008

  • People walked along listening to transistor radios because there were stations with auxiliary power and there were men wrapped in headscarves who sold flashlights and candles and there were candles in thousands of apartment windows and people on line for candles outside the five-and-ten and long lines at phone booths on every second corner.

    Underworld Don Delillo 2008

  • People walked along listening to transistor radios because there were stations with auxiliary power and there were men wrapped in headscarves who sold flashlights and candles and there were candles in thousands of apartment windows and people on line for candles outside the five-and-ten and long lines at phone booths on every second corner.

    Underworld Don Delillo 2008

  • And so on, through five-and-ten cent store, soda and newspaper carrier jobs, until at last he was a bell-hop at the Green - Davidson, the finest hotel in Kansas City, as he informed them.

    An American Tragedy 2004

  • And I went to work at the Woolworth's five-and-ten there in

    Oral History Interview with Edna Y. Hargett, July 19, 1979. Interview H-0163. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) 1979

  • It is obvious that with the sleazy modern materials available in any five-and-ten a rider can produce a pretty handsome costume.

    Centennial Michener, James 1974

  • Sam's garage is going to be no five-and-ten affair.

    The Stars and Stripes The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 United States. Army. American Expeditionary Forces

  • There was an unmade bed in a corner, a litter of newspapers and old clothes, a gas ring, a framed landscape from the five-and-ten, representing some sort of sick brown meadows with sheep; there were no drawings or figures, no hints of the occupant's profession.

    The Fountainhead Rand, Ayn 1943

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