piggly-wiggly
Morphology
rhyme reduplicationEtymology
Cf. wiggly-waggly.Definition
a grocery-store having goods arranged round a series of passage-ways in an enclosed space, the customers collecting what they require and paying for it all at the exit.Usage
US.Quotations
1917 Printer's Ink 20 Dec. 17/1 Perhaps no chain of stores that has been organized in recent years has been the object of so much curiosity and speculation as the Piggly Wiggly stores, which were started in Memphis, Tenn., in 1916.Ibid. 20/1 As an experiment in distribution, Piggly Wiggly is interesting and is worth watching.
1928 Publishers' Weekly 10 Nov. 1972/2 The obvious objection to the idea of a Piggly-Wiggly bookshop is that few book stores are adapted to the customary Piggly-Wiggly pattern, with the turn-stile entrances and exits, and all the merchandise set out onto tables in a U-shaped semi-circle.
1953 Sun (Baltimore) 17 Oct. 8/1 News comes of the death of Clarence Saunders, founder of the Piggly Wiggly stores. It is probable that few members of the younger generation know what a Piggly Wiggly was. Certainly they would not regard it as the novelty it was at the time of its creation 36 years ago. For the Piggly Wiggly was nothing more than a clerkless grocery store in which a customer helped himself to goods off the shelves and paid at the door as he went out. In short, save perhaps for minor details, the Piggly Wiggly represented a system that since has become standard as the super-market.
1955 P. Quentin' Man with Two Wives xxii. 246 He used to work in the Piggly-Wiggly. That's a kind of store they have out there (in California) like the A. and P.
1971 S. Woods' Knavish Crows v. 55 There were houses a do-it-yourself laundry a Piggly Wiggly supermarket.
1973 Guardian 2 June 11/5 Grants, New Mexico has 56 garages, 421 motel rooms, a Piggly Wiggly Supermarket.
References
The Oxford English dictionary, 2nd ed. Edited by J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner. Clarendon Press, 1989. [See biblography.]DictionaryEntries | FieldGuide
