• tiramichu@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    I may not have realised I was using a British English specific term :)

    “High Street” does etymologically derive from the main shopping street(s) in a town where most shops would have premises, as you suggest.

    In a contemporary usage it means physical retail (versus online) and also connotes city centre, versus places that have enormous out of town “big box” stores.

    So economists might say “The high street saw the best Christmas profits in five years” and they mean all retail in that sector of business.

    So when I said CVS were a “high-street pharmacy” what I really meant to imply by that was “they are a brick-and-mortar chain with physical stores on streets in towns and cities all over the place”