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store

nounverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//stɔː//
  • United States//stɔɹ//
  • //sto(ː)ɹ//
  • //stoə//

A place where items may be accumulated or routinely kept.

noun

  1. 1

    A place where items may be accumulated or routinely kept.

    Near-synonyms: storeroom, stockroom, warehouse, magazine (archaic)

    This building used to be a store for old tires.

    And his subjects wrung all they could wring Out of temple and palace and store.

  2. 2

    A supply held in storage.

    Near-synonyms: stock, supply; cache, stash

    They keep a store of canned goods in their basement.

    They could eat from their stores for a month or two if need be.

    But there was an infinite store of mercy in those eyes, for him too a word of pardon even though he had erred and sinned and wandered.

  3. 3

    A building (or portion thereof) where items may be purchased.

    Dad went to the store to get milk and bread.

    There was some laughter, and Roddle was left free to expand his ideas on the periodic visits of cowboys to the town. “Mason Rickets, he had ten big punkins a-sittin' in front of his store, an' them fellers from the Upside-down-F ranch shot 'em up […].”

    In 1866 Colonel J. F. Meline noted that the rebozo had almost disappeared in Santa Fe and that hoop skirts, on sale in the stores, were being widely used.

  4. 4

    datedMemory.

    The main store of 1000 36-bit words seemed large at the time.

  5. 5

    A great quantity or number; abundance.

    I make my love engrafted to this store.

    With store of Ladies, whose bright eies Rain influence, and judge the prise Of Wit, or Arms, while both contend To win her Grace, whom all commend.

  6. 6

    Variant of store cattle beastEllipsis of store cattle beast: a head of store cattle (feeder cattle to be sold to others for finishing).

    heifers and stores

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₁én Proto-Italic *en Proto-Italic *en- Latin in- Proto-Indo-European *steh₂-der. Proto-Indo-European *steh₂u-ro- Proto-Italic *stauros Latin *staurō Latin īnstaurō Proto-Italic *-āzi ▲ Latin -ereinflu. Latin -āre Latin īnstaurāreder. Anglo-Norman storbor. Middle English store English store Inherited from Middle English store, borrowed from Anglo-Norman stor, from Latin īnstaurāre, from īnstaurō + -āre.

verb

  1. 1

    To keep (something) while not in use, generally in a place meant for that purpose.

    I'll store these books in the attic.

    The half-dozen pieces […] were painted white and carved with festoons of flowers, birds and cupids. To display them the walls had been tinted a vivid blue which had now faded, but the carpet, which had evidently been stored and recently relaid, retained its original turquoise.

    Following allocation to Toton on January 1 1996, it stayed there until transferral to Crewe in November 2000, before being stored at Eastleigh on December 17 the same year.

  2. 2

    To contain.

    The cabinets store all the food the mice would like.

  3. 3

    Have the capacity and capability to contain.

    They sell boxes that store 24 mason jars.

  4. 4

    To write (something) into memory or registers.

    This operation stores the result on the stack.

  5. 5

    To stock, to fill (a container, repository, etc.) with things.

    ON the Weſt of Tebeth lies the Province of Kaindu ᵈ, under its own Kings, till conquered by the Khân. It contains many Cities ; the Capital is of the ſame Name, and ſtands in the Entrance of the Province. Here is a great Salt-Lake, ſtored with Fiſh, and ſo affluent in Pearls, that they would be of no Value, if carried-away at Pleaſure.

    His great passion was for hearing stories, and whenever he met any one who was well stored, he never let him go till he had heard them all.

    I have eaten my fill, and had my pockets well stored.

Forms

plural
stores
past tense
stored
past participle
stored
present participle
storing
third person singular
stores
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).