five-and-dime

noun

ˌfīv-ən-ˈdīm 

variants or less commonly five-and-ten

ˌfīv-ən-ˈten 

plural five-and-dimes also five-and-tens

: a retail store that carries a variety of chiefly inexpensive merchandise

When I was a little girl you could still buy things at the five-and-dime.

—Nikki Giovanni

But most five-and-dimes faded away, done in by competition from big box stores, or failure to adapt to changing tastes quickly enough.

—Carl Nolte

After the grocery store came the five-and-ten, a rambling, comfortable hodgepodge of unrelated items and scents.

—Lee Ebler

Examples of five-and-dime in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The retailer started as part of the five-and-dime variety chain that included the retail graveyard nameplates McCrory’s and Woolworth. —Vicki M. Young, Sourcing Journal, 3 Sep. 2019

Some considered Woolworth’s the first national discounter, but Woolworth’s is best classified as a Main Street, five-and-dime store, with counters for sandwiches and chocolate egg cremes. —David Moin, WWD, 21 Oct. 2024

Back in February 1960 in Nashville, a group of mostly Black college students famously took seats at the lunch counter of Woolworth’s five-and-dime downtown to stage a nonviolent protest against segregation. —Joseph Hudak, Rolling Stone, 13 Aug. 2024

The prominent corner store has seen a succession of uses over the years: it’s been a variety store (the G.C. Murphy five-and-dime shop), a dollar store, an antique mall and, most recently, a restaurant called the Five and Dime Ale House, which closed last year. —Amanda Yeager, Baltimore Sun, 22 Apr. 2024

The sit-in movement had been touched off on Feb. 1, 1960, when four Black college students sat down at a White-only lunch counter at an F.W. Woolworth five-and-dime store in downtown Greensboro, N.C. —Emily Langer, Washington Post, 13 Mar. 2024

Kmart started in the late 1800s as the S.S. Kresge Co., becoming a small chain of five-and-dime discount stores. —Dallas News, 26 Feb. 2023

Word History

Etymology

from the fact that all articles in such stores were formerly priced at either 5 or 10 cents

First Known Use

1880, in the meaning defined above