off-licence
off-licence noun: a shop selling alcohol for consumption only off the premises.
Noun
off-licence (plural off-licences)
- A shop selling alcohol for consumption only off the premises.
- Rolliver's inn, the single alehouse at this end of the long and broken village, could only boast of an off-license; hence, as nobody could legally drink on the premises, the amount of overt accommodation for consumers was strictly limited to a little board about six inches wide and two yards long...1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, volume 1, London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., page 40
- After six such encounters in tiny corner shops which normally complained that they were out of sugar, that the cornflakes were late in again and that they couldn't get tomato sauce for love nor money, the Captain, his head reeling, had staggered into the High Street off-licence.1992, Robert Rankin, The Antipope, page 123
- Synonyms:
- bottle shop, offy, beer-off, liquor store, off-sale
Synonyms of off-licence
Forms of off-licence
| plural | off-licences |
|---|---|
| alternative form | off licence |
| alternative form | off-license |
Origin of off-licence
From the fact that such stores have a licence only to sell alcohol for consumption off the premises.
Questions about off-licence
- What does off-licence mean?
- Off-licence means a shop selling alcohol for consumption only off the premises.
- What part of speech is off-licence?
- Off-licence is a noun.
- What is the plural of off-licence?
- The plural of off-licence is off-licences.
Words near off-licence in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: off-licence (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “off-licence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/off-licence. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.