Word of the Day

haberdashery \HAB-er-dash-uh-ree\,
noun:
1. a retail shop dealing in men's furnishings, as shirts, ties, gloves, socks, and hats.
2. the goods sold there.

On the next block were a construction company and a haberdashery with a display of denim pants, heavy overcoats, and wide-brimmed hats.
-- Francine Rivers, Redeeming Love, 2009

Jones suggested haberdashery; Robinson, guided by a strong idea that there is a more absolute opening for the advertising line in haberdashery than in any other business, assented.
-- Anthony Trollope, The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, 1862

In what they probably knew was the false hope of keeping their heads above water in a foreign country, they went from door to door as itinerant pedlars, offering for sale hairpins and slides, pencils and writing paper, ties and other items of haberdashery, just as their ancestors had once walked the countryside of Galicia, Hungary, and the Tyrol with packs.
-- W.G. Sebald, "Austerlitz", 2001

This delightful-sounding word possibly comes to English from the Anglo-Norman hapertas meaning "small ware," though the origin is unknown. Haberdashery first entered English in the early 1400s, though the term for the proprietor of this kind of shop or these kinds of goods, a haberdasher predates haberdashery by 100 years.

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