Definition
Groceries are foodstuffs and household consumables sold in retail quantity for domestic use. In legal contexts, the term arises most often in three settings: (1) construing the scope of trade licenses or permits that authorize the sale of groceries; (2) interpreting statutes or contracts that restrict or exempt transactions involving groceries, such as exemption clauses, homestead provisions, or retail licensing laws; and (3) nuisance and land-use law, where the operation of a grocery business has been evaluated against restrictions on commercial activity in residential zones.
The boundaries of the term are not self-defining. Historical courts have treated the outer edges—particularly whether wines and liquors fall within the category, and whether hardware-adjacent goods commonly stocked by country grocers qualify—as questions of fact rather than law.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Retail foodstuffs and other household supplies; the commodities sold by a grocer or in a grocery store.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The commodities sold by grocers, as tea, coffee, spices, and the like; — chiefly in the plural.
The legal meaning does not sharply diverge from ordinary usage, but courts have been called on to draw precise lines the common definition leaves open. Whether alcohol is a grocery, and whether goods merely sold alongside groceries (shovels, pails, baskets) thereby become groceries, are questions ordinary usage does not resolve but legal instruments frequently require answering.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter GROCERIES primarily as a term of construction — that is, a word embedded in a statute, ordinance, license, contract, or will whose scope a court must determine. Several research traps are worth flagging.
First, the alcohol question is genuinely unresolved as a categorical matter. Both Anderson and Bouvier flag it explicitly as a question of fact, meaning outcomes varied by jurisdiction and circumstance. Researchers reading decisions from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries should not assume that a ruling about a "grocery license" excludes or includes liquor sales without examining the specific facts and statutory context.
Second, the hardware adjacency problem — shovels, pails, baskets sold in country grocery stores — illustrates a recurring issue in trade-classification cases: the presence of a good in a store does not make it a member of the store's defining category. This distinction surfaces in licensing, taxation, and zoning disputes.
Third, the nuisance dimension is underappreciated. Bouvier records that a grocery was held to be an "offensive trade or calling" within a prohibition on using a dwelling-house for such purposes. Researchers working in early land-use history, deed restriction interpretation, or the history of zoning law should treat GROCERIES as a term that carried commercial-nuisance valence in nineteenth-century Massachusetts and potentially elsewhere.
Fourth, statutory exemptions — particularly in consumer protection, sales tax, and food assistance law — define "groceries" with significant precision in modern regulatory codes. Modern statutory definitions diverge substantially from the open-ended common law usage documented in historical dictionaries. A researcher should not import the historical definition into a modern regulatory context, or vice versa.
Historical Dictionary Support
Anderson and Bouvier are in close agreement on the substantive content, which is unsurprising given Bouvier's foundational influence. Both treat the definition as grounded in household and table use, both note that shovels, pails, and buckets fall outside the term despite being sold in country grocery stores, and both flag alcohol as a fact question.
Bouvier adds two details Anderson omits or abbreviates: the citation to a Massachusetts decision holding a grocery to be an offensive trade within a residential-use prohibition (101 Mass. 531), and the reference to groceries kept as part of a broader stock — suggesting the dictionaries were aware of mixed-use retail environments where the grocery category needed to be carved out from a larger inventory.
Neither dictionary addresses the modern regulatory landscape — sales tax exemptions, SNAP/EBT eligibility definitions, or food labeling law — which is where the term does most of its contemporary legal work. Historical dictionary entries are useful for nineteenth-century contract and licensing disputes but should not be treated as authoritative on any modern statutory question.
Jurisdictional Note
Modern definitions of groceries vary significantly by regulatory context. Sales tax exemption statutes in states like Texas, New York, and California each define the category differently, particularly regarding prepared foods, beverages, and dietary supplements. Researchers should locate the applicable statutory definition rather than relying on common law usage.