mongery

English

Etymology

monger +‎ -y

Noun

mongery (countable and uncountable, plural mongeries)

1. The process of selling something of a specific type; the business of a monger.
   • 1852, The Western Law Journal - Volume 9, page 446:

     To this the plaintiff replied that that was true, but that the term of which he was possessed was created four years before the defendant was possessed of his workshops and before he carried on his iron-mongery work there.

   • 1948 May, “General Notice No. 888 The Fraudulent Transfer of Business Ordinance, 1930”, in Kenya Gazette, volume 75, number 29:

     NOTICE is hereby given that the business of butchery and fish-mongery carried out at Government Lane, Nairobi, on premises LR No 209/560, by Sadrudm Jamal Jiwa Mussa and Amina Sadrudin Jama Jiwa Mussa, both of Nairobi in the Republic of Kenya, under the name or style of Family Butcher and Fish Monger, has, as from the 20th day of June, 1973, been sold and transferred to Evangeline Celeste Muh and Benjamin Jacob Mwakio, Nairobi, who will carry on the said business at the same place and under the same name and style of Family Butcher.

   • 1997, Rajendra Kumar Sharma, Urban Sociology, →ISBN, page 217:

     However, while there may be some truth in this opinion, it is an undeniable fact that prostitution poses a great threat to family peace and that the cases of marital dissolution multiply due to prostitute mongery.

2. The process of promoting or spreading something undesirable.
   • 1816, Ralph Griffiths, The Monthly Review, Or, Literary Journal, page 248:

     Alehouses were more frequented, drunkenness more general, tale-mongery and sedition, the vices of sedentary idleness, prevailed, while a fanatical gloom was spreading over the country.

   • 1831, Thomas Carlyle, “The Everlasting Yea”, in Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh. , London: Chapman and Hall, , →OCLC, book second, page 129:

     For you have the whole Borough, with all its love-makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and contentments, as in miniature, and could cover it all with your hat.

   • 1914, Railway Carmen's Journal - Volume 19, page 717:

     The licentiousness of paganism outside of the immorality of the flesh was profit mongery and its twin Sister, interest, or as it was then called, usury and slavery.

   • 1992, Richard Golding, Group Membership in the Epidemic Style, page 1:

     In [Demers88, Demers89) three epidemic communication methods are specified: direct mail, rumor mongery, and anti-entropy.

   • 2014, John G. Gunnell, Social Inquiry After Wittgenstein and Kuhn: Leaving Everything as It Is, page 0231538340:

     Such “image-mongery” only leads to “a lack of clarity about the role of imaginability” and about “the extent to which it insures that a sentence makes sense.”

3. That which is sold by a monger.
   • 1901, De Witt Clinton Blashfield, George Foster Longsdorf, Abbott's Cyclopedic Digest of All the Decisions of All the Courts of New York from the Earliest Time to the Year 1900, Volume 3:

     A building contract provided that all iron mongery was to be furnished by the owner.

   • 1921, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science:

     The most important articles of Austrian trade are at present as follows: wood and wooden articles, iron, and iron mongery, paper and paper goods, (stationery), machinery, apparatus, textile fabrics, clothes, grain, leguminous plants, flour, vegetables, fats, fuel, chemical products, mechanical instruments, watches, leather and fancy goods and the so-called "Vienese articles" —ready-made clothes, furniture, cars and carriages, leather goods, articles for smokers, works of art, articles produced by the arts and crafts and cigarette paper.

   • 2004, Nigel Cox, Tarzan Presley, →ISBN, page 323:

     Hardware store gottem from the mongery dealer.

   • 2013, Chris Coelho, Timothy Matlack, Scribe of the Declaration of Independence, →ISBN, page 22:

     The other line was anchored by “heart and club German steel, Stidman's cross-cut saws, duck, goose and buck shot and an assortment of iron mongery.”

4. The building where a monger conducts business.
   • 1871 September, J.W. Palmer, “The City of Monuments”, in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, a Popular Journal of General Literature, volume 8, page 271:

     For, within the city lines a crawling, sticky stream, nor picturesque nor sweet to sight or smell, it yet hath smothered passions of its own, and for no graver provocation than an April shower will burst its feeble bounds, and, like Leigh Hunt's pig in Smithfield market, "rush up all manner of streets," and over bridges, and down cellars, and through an unclassified abomination of mongeries, distributing mud, dead cats and promiscuous stenches with happy, lavish malice.

   • 1984, Paul Wallach, Guide to Restaurants of Southern California, →ISBN, page 136:

     Although there are 75 seats and a kind of underwater flotsam decor in which fancy cocktails are served, the humble beauty of the mongery remains in the freshest fish served above sea level.

   • 2014, James A. Michener, The Covenant: A Novel, →ISBN, page 87:

     At the door of the mongery he kissed his wife farewell: “It would not be proper for you to deal with the sheriff. I believe he'll come. You watch for the blue flag, too.”

Usage notes

This term is often used in combination, as, e,g, ironmongery, fishmongery, etc.

Related terms

Anagrams

• gnomery