Bars and Their Extensions

INCE THE RENAISSANCE at least, bar has designated some type of barrier or counter, over which drink (or food) is (OED, definition 28). This word for counter was subsequently generalized to the establishment that dispenses beverages. Recently, however, there has been even more variation in what bar refers to. The term has been further extended to shops (or to areas of stores) specializing in items that have nothing whatsoever to do with drinking-food, clothes, and sundry other wares. In some instances, bar is used even for the goods these places sell; and the older sense survives in the use of the word for an article of furniture, although such counters are put to new uses and are found in new locations. We now have everything from clam bar and tobacco bar to corset bar and the less restraining padded bar. Labeled an Americanism, bar in the extended sense in which it is associated with commodities other than drink is first cited by the OEDS (1972) from 1954, a date supported by the absence of this use of bar from The Dictionary of American English (1951). I have, however, come across two examples that antedate the OEDS, one of them by a good number of years. Shave bar 'place that rents razors and sells talc and lotion, so customers may shave on their way to work' can be found in Parade, 21 January 1951, p. 4. And it has been reported to me by Thomas Pyles that at least as early as the late 1920s the old Rennert Hotel in Baltimore, one of H. L. Mencken's haunts, had a raw bar 'place where oysters, clams, and other shellfish are opened in view of the customer before being served to him' and that other hotels and restaurants, particularly in coastal and gulf cities, doubtless had raw bars as well. The term is still current, as an advertisement in the yellow pages of the 1973 Washington telephone directory (cited below) demonstrates. This extended use of bar, then, seems to be nearly fifty years old, although much more popularly and frequently used in the last twenty years. The semantic processes are common enough. Bar 'counter' has been generalized to denote the area in which various products are sold. Then a series of items (be they crustaceans or cosmetics) arranged in a long case or on a counter top can be referred to metonymically as a bar. The cultural implications of extending the designation bar to areas or shops containing such counters is a little more complex. It seems clear that the associations of the word with alcohol condition its use. Applying the term to places for the sale of consumable items other than those connected with drinking has the advantage of transferring from the alcoholic use a sense of festivity, daring, and even abandon. Coming up to the bar tantalizes the customer

Linguistics · Law, logistics, and international trade · History · Philosophy

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