What is "emporium"

Emporium \Em*po"ri*um\, n.; pl. Emporiums, L. Emporia. [L., fr. Gr. ?, fr. ? belonging to commerce, fr. ? traveler, trader; ? in + ? way through and over, path. See In, and Empiric, Fare.]

1. A place of trade; a market place; a mart; esp., a city or town with extensive commerce; the commercial center of a country.

   That wonderful emporium [Manchester] . . . was then a mean and ill-built market town.
   --Macaulay.

   It is pride . . . which fills our streets, our emporiums, our theathers.
   --Knox.

2. (Physiol.) The brain. [Obs.]

1580s, "place of trade, mart," from Latin emporium, from Greek emporion "trading place, market," from emporos "merchant," originally "traveler," from assimilated form of en "in" (see en- (2)) + poros "passage, voyage," related to peirein "to pass through" (see port (n.1)). Greek emporos in the "merchant" sense meant especially "one who trades on a large scale, usually but not necessarily by sea" [Buck], as opposed to kapelos "local retail dealer, shopkeeper." Properly, a town which serves as the commercial hub of a region, but by 1830s American English "Grandiloquently applied to a shop or store" [Craigie].

n. 1 A market place or trading centre, particularly of an ancient city. 2 A shop that offers a wide variety of goods, often used facetiously. 3 A department store. 4 (context obsolete English) The brain.

1. n. a large retail store organized into departments offering a variety of merchandise; commonly part of a retail chain [syn: department store]

2. [also: emporia (pl)]

Emporium may refer to:

• A large retail shop or store
• Emporium (antiquity), places which the traders of one country had reserved to their business interests within the territory of another country
• Emporium (early medieval), an early medieval European trading post
• Emporium (Italy), an ancient city in Italy
• Emporium, Pennsylvania, U.S. city
• Emporium (Bangkok), shopping mall in Thailand
• Emporium (department store chain), defunct U.S. retailer operating in five western states
• The Emporium (San Francisco), former department store in the San Francisco Bay Area
• The Emporium, a building in Jamestown, California, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Tuolumne County, California
• Emporium (short stories), a collection of short stories by Adam Johnson

In antiquity, an emporion (Greek) or emporium (Latin; the plural is emporia in both languages, although in Greek there should be no plural) was a place which the traders of one nation had reserved to their business interests within the territory of another nation. Famous emporia include Sais, where Solon went to acquire the knowledge of Egypt; Elim, where Hatshepsut kept her Red Sea fleet; Elat, where Thebes was supplied with mortuary materials, linen, bitumen, naphtha, frankincense, myrrh and carved stone amulets from Palestine, Canaan, Aram, Lebanon, Amon, Hazor, Moab, Edom, Punt and the Arabian Peninsula from Petra to Midian; and Olbia, which exported cereals, fish and slaves.

Emporia functioned much like European trading colonies in China.

In ancient Greek it referred both to the various Greek and Phoenician city-states and trading posts in Egypt, North Africa, Spain, Britain, and the Arabian Peninsula. Included in this term were cities like Avaris and Syene in Lower Egypt, Thebes in Upper Egypt and the Red Sea ports of Elim and Elat. For the Hittites, it included Kanesh and Kadesh. For Phoenicia, it included Gadges, Carthage, Leptis Magna, and Cyrene, among others (although Cyrene was originally founded by Greeks).

Emporium, more formally known as Troutman's Emporium, was a chain of department stores founded in 1955 by Dallas Troutman in North Bend, Oregon. After 1977, Emporium's headquarters was located in Eugene, Oregon. At its peak, Emporium operated at least 34 stores, in Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, California and Washington. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2002 and liquidated. The last stores closed in 2003.

Emporium is a luxury shopping mall in Khlong Toei district, Bangkok, Thailand. It opened in 1997. It is owned and operated by The Mall Group and another mall, Siam Paragon.

It is on Sukhumvit Road at Sukhumvit Soi 24 beside Queen's Park. It is connected directly to the Phrom Phong Station on the Sukhumvit Line of the BTS Skytrain by a footbridge. It is owned by the same company as Siam Paragon and its direct competitor is Central Group.

Along with the Emporium department store, the mall contains a cinema multiplex and book, record, fashion and trinket shops, a grocery store, a food court, and restaurants.

Emporium is a popular hub for entertainment, food, and education for local residents and visitors. Inside are "Emprivé Cineclub by SF Corporation", an exhibition hall and children's play centres.

Emporium (2002) is the debut short-story collection by San Francisco writer and Stanford University Jones Lecturer Adam Johnson. Emporium collected nine stories that previously appeared in American literary journals and magazines. Penguin published the paperback edition in 2003. Translated into French, Japanese, Serbian, German and Catalan, Emporium was named “Debut of the Year” by Amazon.com. Described as a “remarkable debut” by the New Yorker and “The Arrival of a talented new writer” by the New York Times, Johnson’s Emporium was nominated for a Young Lions Award by the New York Public Library. According to Daniel Mendelsohn, writing for New York Magazine, “Johnson's oh-so-slightly futuristic flights of fancy, his vaguely Blade Runner–esque visions of a cluttered, anaerobic American culture, illustrate something very real, very current: the way we must embrace the unknown, take risks, in order to give flavor and meaning to life.”

The term emporia (singular: emporium) is applied to trading settlements which emerged in north-western Europe in the sixth to seventh centuries, and persisted into the ninth century. Also known in English as wics, the emporia are characterised by their peripheral locations, usually on the shore at the edge of a kingdom, their lack of infrastructure (typically they contained no churches) and their short-lived nature, since by the year 1000, the emporia had been replaced by the revival of European towns. Examples of emporia include Dorestad, Quentovic, Gipeswic, Hamwic, and Lundenwic (for which see Anglo-Saxon London). Their role in the economic history of western Europe remains debated. Their most famous exponent has been the British archaeologist Richard Hodges.

The Emporium was the river port of the ancient Rome, that rose approximately between the Aventine Hill and the Rione Testaccio (the Rione takes its name from the hill made of broken amphorae, originated by the wastes from the trade activities of the port).