boutique
/buːˈtiːk
/noun
1A small shop selling fashionable clothes or accessories.The circle of chic establishments includes boutiques that sell fancy clothes, and lots of places to take your mummy for lunch....
- The bags are being sold in Miami boutiques and art museum shops.
- The magazine will be ‘distributed free in clothes shops, boutiques, pubs and cinemas’ and the first issue has a picture of a giant pigeon on the front cover.
2A business serving a sophisticated or specialized clientele: [as modifier]: California’s boutique wineries...
- It is interested in offering boutique money management services to business clients.
- How much a business owner ends up paying a boutique investment banker can vary wildly.
- We've seen the campaign profession grow from a boutique business to a mature, thriving industry.
Derivatives
boutiquey
- This area of Uruguay reminds me of the Hamptons, near New York: same ocean, same boutiquey feel.
- I'm thinking the routes would be past all the cute boutiquey parts of all the major cities in the U.S.
- Another recent addition to L.A. is the Grove, an outdoor mall, which has your basics as well as department stores and more boutiquey shops.
Origin
Mid 18th century: from French, 'small shop', via Latin from Greek apothēkē 'storehouse'. Compare with bodega.
Small shops started being called boutiques in French during the mid 18th century. The French word goes back through Latin to Greek apothēkē ‘a storehouse’. This is ultimately the source of apothecary (Late Middle English), and of bodega, a shop in Spain selling wine. In the 1950s boutique came to be used particularly of a shop selling fashionable clothes. Other small businesses claiming exclusive clienteles began to call themselves boutiques: the boutique winery appeared in the United States in the 1970s, and an early mention of a boutique hotel, in New York, dates from 1989.