bodega n [Appar from Puerto Rican Span, though this sense of bodega occurs in some other varieties of AmSpan as well] chiefly NYC
A small neighborhood grocery store or convenience store; originally, and still commonly, a Hispanic one.
[1934 New Yorker 1 Dec 50 NYC, Mr. J. Lopez was in the grocery and meat business, but his House went by no such workaday name. It was called, in vast letters, La Flor de Quintana Roo—Bodega y Carnecería.] 1956 Time 2 July 58 NYC, There is not really a section that is to Puerto Ricans what Harlem is to Negroes. Almost every sector of the city has a bodega (grocery) or two, and perhaps a Spanish-language movie house. 1960 NY Herald Tribune (NY) 28 Aug sec 4 6/4, One or two of the country’s canniest and best-known collectors have been making their way down to the bagel-and-bodega district to pick up finds by tomorrow’s comers. 1964 NY Times (NY) 5 Apr 117/1, She goes just across cobblestoned, pushcart filled Avenue C to the bodega, which she and other Puerto Ricans simply call “the Spanish store.” 1970 Ibid 3 Aug 33/6, At a time when corner groceries are giving way to giant supermarket chains, bodegas remain as general stores where residents in Puerto Rican neighborhoods often come to chat and pass the time of day. 1977 Danville Reg. (VA) 5 Aug sec B 5/5 NYC, “It’s like I’m living on a frontier,” a self-styled liberal woman from Manhattan complains. . . “The looters almost reached down here to where I live. The owner of a bodega on the next block, where my kids run little errands sometimes, is shot.” 1986 NY Times (NY) 14 June 27/2, I used to laugh at my neighborhood bodega’s vast stock of Pampers, but now I’m grateful. I have become a New York new father. 1994 Post–Std. (Syracuse NY) 15 Aug sec A 4/3, Two hulking billboards . . flanked a vacant storefront. Two bars, a laundry, and a corner bodega were the only open businesses. 2000 DARE File NYC, In my experience, a small grocery/store does not have to be Spanish-speaking for it to be called a bodega, although I believe if it is Spanish-speaking it is more likely to be called one. When I lived in Greek Astoria our little stores were still bodegas, as are the couple of Pakistani-run shops in my current neighborhood. 2014 NY Times (NY) (Internet) NYC, Ramon Murphy, president of the Bodega Association of the United States, . . said that New York City’s 12,000 bodegas play a vital role in supporting the local economy.