Greengrocer
A greengrocer kept a small shop selling fresh vegetables and fruit; the word is British, while Americans said produce store.
Greengrocer can mean the shopkeeper or the shop. In Britain and Australia it was the everyday name for a fruit and vegetable seller, sometimes also called a fruiterer; in the United States the shop was called a produce store.
By the 1940s more produce was sold through grocery stores than through produce stores, and supermarkets later made greengrocers rarer.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1860 to 1910 census
Mrs. Ann Platt, 45, Greengrocer, England
How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "Greengrocer." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/greengrocer. Last checked 2026-10-10.