shop-keeper

plural shop-keepers

1. datedDated form of shopkeeper.

   The women wear neck-kerchieves spreading over their shoulders, and ruffs, but their aprons show that they are shop-keepers rather than gentry; their high-crowned felt hats are of the mid-Elizabethan fashion.

   1978, Joanna Bird, Hugh Chapman, John Clark, editors, Collectanea Londiniensia: Studies in London Archaeology and History Presented to Ralph Merrifield, London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, page 271

   2 more examples

   …in some measure I descend to the fashion of the shop-keepers, who to scrue up the buyer to the higher price, will tell them no better can be had for mony, ’tis the choicest ware in England, and if any can match it, he shall have it for nought.

   1653, Thomas Urquhart, Logopandecteision, quoted in The Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart, published 1834, page 332

   Oh! how blissful is imagination coloured by hope, and how far more enviable a state than to degenerate into a shop-keeper’s wife, counting out greasy halfpence in the dog-days, or darning her husband’s ragged stockings over the cradle of a squalling brat, singing lullaby with a voice that might have roused a sultan from his cambric pillow, enraptured with the sylvan strain!

   1810, [anonymous] […], chapter XXVI, in Splendid Follies. A Novel, […]. Founded on Facts., volume III, London: […] J[ames] F[letcher] Hughes, […], →OCLC, pages 83–84