emporium
/ɛmˈpɔːrɪəm
/ /ɪmˈpɔːrɪəm/noun (plural emporia /ɛmˈpɔːrɪə/ /ɪmˈpɔːrɪə/ or emporiums)
1A large retail store selling a wide variety of goods.Take the site of the Sogo Department Store, a high-end emporium that once sold everything from elegant kimonos to shockingly expensive packets of dried seaweed....
- Midtown gets mighty crowded, but it's the place to go for department stores and designer emporiums.
- This is primarily a family destination, as witnessed by the myriad small amusement parks and large shopping emporia selling beanie babies along the main strip.
Synonyms
shop, store, boutique, outlet, retail outlet, reseller;
department store, chain store, supermarket, hypermarket, superstore, megastore;
establishment
informal shed
North American informal big box
1.1 archaic A centre of commerce; a market.Zanzibar is one of Dublin's premier cattle mart emporiums....
- The labor to create a commercial emporium required thousands of workers, who made Baltimore one of the new nation's most diverse, plebeian - and in the eyes of some, disorderly - cities.
- Edged by marble columns, the marble-floored space in the bank will retain some of the features of its banking past - the counters in the centre will remain, to be incorporated into the emporium.
Origin
Late 16th century: from Latin, from Greek emporion, from emporos 'merchant', based on a stem meaning 'to journey'.
An emporium is unconnected with emperor, but comes via Latin from Greek emporion, from emporos ‘merchant’, based on the word for ‘journey’.