Word.ws English Dictionary

policy shop

policy shop noun: a gambling place where punters could bet on the numbers which would be drawn in lotteries.

Noun

policy shop (plural policy shops)

  1. (US, historical, obsolete) A gambling place where punters could bet on the numbers which would be drawn in lotteries.
    • In lottery and policy shops do they not generally stick up an exchange sign, and hold out “stationery sold here,” so that persons who did not understand it would suppose they sold stationery?1856, New York (State) Legislature: Senate, Documents of the Senate of the State of New York, Volume 2, page 212
    • The policy-shops draw from the people, especially the poor and ignorant, hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.1873, Timothy Shay Arthur, Cast Adrift, page 232

Forms of policy shop

pluralpolicy shops

Origin of policy shop

From policy (“illegal lottery”) + shop.

Questions about policy shop

What does policy shop mean?
Policy shop means a gambling place where punters could bet on the numbers which would be drawn in lotteries.
What part of speech is policy shop?
Policy shop is a noun.
What is the plural of policy shop?
The plural of policy shop is policy shops.

Words near policy shop in the dictionary

  1. policy mixes
  2. policy pattern
  3. policy patterns
  4. policy rate
  5. policy rates
  6. policy shop
  7. policy shops
  8. policy wonk
  9. policy wonks
  10. policy-maker
  11. policy-makers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: policy shop (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.

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Cite this entry: “policy shop.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/policy_shop. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.