Walking along the outskirts of Russian cities, you can find various signs on the ground floors of houses: “Haberdashery”, “Shoe”, including “Deli”. Was a grocery store called only a grocery store? Or does this word have other lexical meanings?
Etymology
A grocery store is a word made up of two Greek roots - "gastr" and "nomos". Each of us met the first root “gastr” in the words “gastroenterologist” and “gastritis”, this root means “stomach”. The second root "nomos" from Greek translates as "law". It turns out that the ancient Greeks called the grocery stores the slaves that made up the menu. After many centuries, it turned out that the deli is a commander, or patrician, who spoiled their "gastro" with various "goodies", spending all their free time at the tables. This word traveled in different languages, it got into Latin, which later became dead. We recognized this concept in Europe. In France, they called the nobles who knew a lot about dishes. And now, after several centuries, in the twentieth century, in the Soviet era, the store was called a grocery store.
Realities of the twentieth century
As it turned out, the deli has several meanings. But what happens to this word in Russian? So, according to the definition of William Pokhlebkin, a deli is a connoisseur, lover, and also a connoisseur of delicious dishes. In addition to this value, that was the name of the person who knew the intricacies of culinary art. The word acquired the second meaning in the 30s of the twentieth century. These were stores of the highest and first category. The range here was the most diverse. They sold meat products, various smoked meats, delicious canned fish, caviar and even fruit. In other words, a grocery store is a store selling various food products.
The first grocery store in Soviet Russia
Grocery store number 1 was the Moscow "Eliseevsky". He had a good location. It had sufficient area, both of a trading floor, and utility rooms. Equally important was the availability of competent and experienced specialists who worked at Eliseevsky. Grocery store No. 2 was a department store on Smolenskaya Square. Grocery store No. 3 appeared in the capital with the opening of the Moscow Hotel on Okhotnoryadskaya Square.
So, in 1933, the first grocery store was opened in Moscow. The meaning of the word in modern Russian is interpreted as: 1) a lover of delicious food, as well as a person who knows a lot about culinary art; 2) a shop selling meat, fish and other canned goods. With the opening of such stores in the capital, grocery stores began to appear in other major cities of the USSR.