five-and-dime
Americannoun
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a variety store that sells small, inexpensive items.
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a thing, situation, or practice in which a 5 is followed by a 10, such as a golf hole that is best played with a 5 iron and then a 10 iron, or judging a screenplay based on its first 5 and last 10 pages (often used attributively).
adjective
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relating to or being a variety store that sells small items at low prices.
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inexpensive and of poor quality; cheap or lacking in class and sophistication.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Newberry’s five-and-dime store, she worked for a month and a half to pay it off in installments, wearing it for years until it all but disintegrated.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 14, 2025
“We’ve had so much growth, so much influx of folks that the small-town historical Bentonville that was the Sam Walton Bentonville where the five-and-dime started is virtually unrecognizable.”
From Seattle Times • Apr. 25, 2023
That’s like getting Walmart to promise to partner with the five-and-dime down the street.
From Washington Post • Apr. 2, 2022
Born in New York on June 6, 1933, Broad was an only child who grew up in Detroit, where his Lithuanian immigrant father, Leon, worked as a house painter before operating several five-and-dime stores.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 30, 2021
He starts a store, a sort of five-and-dime; he marries and fathers four attractive children; he receives a Medal of Freedom from President Bush, after which he promptly dies, making way for the eulogies.
From "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
