also drug store n.

A store where prescriptions are filled and drugs and other articles are sold; a pharmacy.

Origin: 1810

Apothecary had been used in England since the Middle Ages as a name for a purveyor of medication, and pharmacy was coined there too, but it took American marketing savvy to invent such a potent term as drugstore. This new compound combined American Store (1721), rather than British shop, with a down-to-earth bluntness about what was sold using the simple word drug that has always fascinated Americans.

Early evidence of the appeal of our new term is an 1810 newspaper ad from Washington, D.C., that prefixed another effective four-letter word: "Cash Drug Store." Not long after that, drug stores were everywhere. In 1819 the book Sketches of Louisville and Its Environs stated, "There are at this moment, in Louisville...three printing offices, three drug stores."

These early drugstores were just apothecaries or pharmacies by another name. But thanks to soda water, they expanded their wares beyond medication to all things necessary for health and welfare. Naturally or artificially carbonated, the bubbly water was a health drink of the 1820s and 1830s, and by the 1840s it was dispensed at a soda counter in many drugstores. It was soon discovered that this "medicine" tasted better with flavoring from ginger and other roots. And so the soda fountain became a social center, not just a medical destination. It was at a soda fountain in Atlanta in 1887 that Coca-Cola got its start, and it was through soda fountains that this most famous of American beverages began its worldwide spread.

In the twentieth century shelves of bottled and canned sodas displaced drugstore soda fountains. The stores themselves grew in size and variety of goods to the point where drugstore was both inadequate to describe them and too oldfashioned. They had morphed into brand-name superstores on the one hand and convenience stores on the other, betraying their origins only by housing a pharmacy and extensive shelves of over-the-counter medication.

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The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: a retail shop where medicine and other articles are sold
  Synonyms: apothecary's shop, chemist's, chemist's shop, pharmacy

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - apotek med kioskvarer

Nederlands (Dutch)
drogisterij, drogist, kruidenier

Français (French)
n. - (US) drugstore

Deutsch (German)
n. - Drogerie, Geschäft für gängige Gebrauchsartikel mit Imbiß

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - κατάστημα που συνδυάζει φαρμακείο με ψιλικατζίδικο, ντράγκστορ

Italiano (Italian)
farmacia

Português (Portuguese)
n. - drogaria (f)

Русский (Russian)
аптека

Español (Spanish)
n. - farmacia

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - apotek

中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
药房, 杂货店

中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 藥房, 雜貨店

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 약국

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - ドラッグストア

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) محل يبيع العديد من السلع بالإضافه الى الأدويه عادة تبيع السندويشات الخفيفه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮בית-מרקחת המוכר משקאות קלים ועוד (צפון-אמריקבה), חנות כל-בו‬

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Solarcaine Drugstore	Facial Sponges Drugstore
drugstore com	Best Drugstore Straightening Irons