pet shop

Noun

pet shop (plural pet shops)

1. A shop that sells animals kept as domestic pets, and products for caring for and feeding them.
   • "I'll take three of those little butter-fishes." No sooner was the sentence spoken than I realized that it was not correct English, but the fish dealer knew not the difference; and if one were to say to the proprietor of a pet shop, "I'll take three of those goldfish," he, in all likelihood, would...1927, Ida M[ay] Mellen, “'Fish' or 'Fishes'”, in Louise Pound, Kemp Malone, Arthur [Garfield] Kennedy, editors, American Speech, volume II, Baltimore, Md.: American Dialect Society, →ISSN, page 246...
   • […] Mr. Wilham's fashionable West End pet-shop, where dogs lived in excelsior-floored cubicles, appealing to the passers-by.1932, Rudyard Kipling, “The Woman in His Life”, in Limits and Renewals, Dominions edition, London: Macmillan and Co., […], →OCLC, page 47

   Synonyms:

   pet store

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see pet (adjective), shop: (dated) A favourite or cherished shop.
   • He knew, though Morty did not, what operas she preferred,—whose pictures attracted her to linger near them at the Exhibition,—the favourite passages of her favourite writers,—the pet shops she frequented,—the promenades she liked best,—and, above all, the negative or positive attraction of the...1846, [Catherine] Gore, chapter II, in The Débutante; or, The London Season. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […] , →OCLC, page 36
   • And I got hold of the box with all the messes she dabs on her face, her eyebrows, her teeth, her false front, the most extraordinary things. I stuck them all on. The eyebrows would not go straight, and the front kept slipping down my forehead; still, the general effect, the tout ensemble, was...1895 April, Mrs. Conney, “An Old Maid’s Mistake”, in Belgravia: A London Magazine, volume LXXXVI, London: F[rederick] V[ernon] White & Co., […], →OCLC, chapter XI, page 339