My favorite NY-Times columnist Maureen Dowd who consistently supplies me the material for posting questions in EL&U site begins today’s (December 8) article titled “A Lost Civilization” with the line:
“My college roommates and I used to grocery shop and cook together. The only food we seemed to agree on was corn, so we ate a lot of corn.”
All of Cambridge, Oxford, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries register “grocery” as a noun meaning “grocery store (Cambridge),” “grocer’s shop or business (Oxford)” and “(1) grocer’s store, (2) groceries sold by a grocer.” However, none of them lists “grocery” as a verb.
I know a noun are often used as verbs like 'bicycle a trip,' 'pen a letter,' and 'market a new product,' but is “grocery” widely used as a verb meaning ‘to visit a grocery store,’ or simply ‘shop around’?
Is the use of "X-shop" as a verb 'trendy' and universal?
Can I say “I barber shop once a month," "He golf shopped to buy a new club," "She used to barger shops for a lunch," "I sport shopped to buy a new ski wear," "I computer shopped a new i-phone model yesterday," "I book shopped for a Jeffery Archer's paperback yesterday," and "I pawn shopped to loan $300," without being frowned?