Originally Posted By: twosleepy

 Originally Posted By: TheFallibleFiend
When we moved to AK, there was I recall, on Post, (Ft. Wainwright) a "groceteria" which was often shortened to "the grosh" or "the gross." It was indistinguishable from what we would call today, "a convience store."

Now that's just gross! It really does sound funny to my ears. It's not a word in (standard) Spanish, although a homophone is "groserķa", which means something rude (gross/coarse). In Spanish the suffix "-erķa" often denotes a venue that sells whatever the root part is, for example: zapaterķa (zapato = shoe), panaderķa (pan = bread) and so on. (Hence, also, "cafeterķa"...)


I suspect that it was pronounced gross-uh-TEER-ee-uh rather than in any Spanish way. but speaking of Spanish, when I was visiting a customer in New Jersey and working on one of their machines that my company made, the mostly Spanish workers there referred to the traveling lunch truck that came around during the noon hour as la loncherķa.