the.com/drugstore
A pharmacy that quietly became a place to buy everything except actual healing.
means A retail shop selling medicines plus toiletries, snacks, cosmetics, and an inexplicable amount of greeting cards.
from American coinage from the 1810s, when shops literally sold drugs — meaning medicinal compounds — before sprawling into soda fountains and sundries.
Soda birthplaceCoca-Cola debuted at a drugstore soda fountain, 1886.
Word splitBrits say chemist; Americans say drugstore stubbornly.
Cheap qualityDrugstore became shorthand for inexpensive, mass-market goods.