shop
Americannoun
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a retail store, especially a small one.
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a small store or department in a large store selling a specific or select type of goods.
the ski shop at Smith's.
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the workshop of a craftsperson or artisan.
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the workshop of a person who works in a manual trade; place for doing specific, skilled manual work.
a carpenter's shop.
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any factory, office, or business.
Our ad agency is a well-run shop.
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Education.
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a course of instruction in a trade, as carpentry, printing, etc., consisting chiefly of training in the use of its tools and materials.
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a classroom in which such a course is given.
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one's trade, profession, or business as a subject of conversation or preoccupation.
verb (used without object)
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to visit shops and stores for purchasing or examining goods.
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to seek or examine goods, property, etc., offered for sale.
Retail merchants often stock their stores by shopping in New York.
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to seek a bargain, investment, service, etc. (usually followed byfor ).
I'm shopping for a safe investment that pays good interest.
verb (used with object)
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to seek or examine goods, property, etc., offered for sale in or by.
She's shopping the shoe stores this afternoon.
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Chiefly British Informal.
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to put into prison; jail.
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to behave treacherously toward; inform on; betray.
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Slang. to try to sell (merchandise or a project) in an attempt to obtain an order or contract.
interjection
idioms
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set up shop, to go into business; begin business operations.
to set up shop as a taxidermist.
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talk shop, to discuss one's trade, profession, or business.
After dinner we all sat around the table and talked shop.
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shut up shop,
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to close a business temporarily, as at the end of the day.
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to suspend business operations permanently.
They couldn't make a go of it and had to shut up shop.
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noun
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a place, esp a small building, for the retail sale of goods and services
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an act or instance of shopping, esp household shopping
the weekly shop
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a place for the performance of a specified type of work; workshop
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informal
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in disarray
his papers were all over the shop
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in every direction
I've searched for it all over the shop
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to close business at the end of the day or permanently
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to become defensive or inactive
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to speak about one's work, esp when meeting socially, sometimes with the effect of excluding those not similarly employed
verb
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to visit a shop or shops in search of (goods) with the intention of buying them
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slang (tr) to inform on or betray, esp to the police
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of shop
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English shoppe (noun), Old English sceoppa “booth”; akin to scypen “stall” ( see shippon), German Schopf “lean-to,” Schuppen “shed”
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.
He was sitting in a coffee shop on London's King's Road on an October day when the phone rang.
From BBC • May 23, 2026
About 90% of the Grogu acting was created with puppeteering techniques, says John Knoll, senior visual-effects supervisor at Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic, whose shop supplemented the other 10% with computer-generated imagery.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 22, 2026
Kaziha had run the gift shop inside the mosque since the facility opened more than three decades ago.
From Los Angeles Times • May 22, 2026
Here are five ways to shop smart and tweak your menu to help stretch your budget for the holiday weekend — and all your summer cookouts.
From MarketWatch • May 22, 2026
And one morning soon afterward the first customer in the shop was a small thin-bearded man named Smit.
From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom
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.
