When you push open the door of a supermarket on a Saturday morning, you don’t think about competition. You think about the empty fridge, the list scrawled on your phone, the squeaky shopping cart. The expression “doing the shopping” originally refers to something entirely different than a trip down the aisles. Its etymology goes back to the idea of running, of moving quickly from one point to another, long before the invention of large retail stores.
The word “shopping” before the supermarket: a movement, not a purchase
In Old French, the noun course refers to the action of running, in the physical sense of the term. Historical dictionaries like Godefroy or FEW attest that the word quickly shifts to a second meaning: the “round,” the quick movement made to accomplish a specific task.
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People spoke of a “shopping trip to the market” to describe the journey, not what was bought there. The nuance matters: the word captures the movement, not the transaction. When we ask why we say doing the shopping, it’s this layer of meaning that we find beneath the surface.
This shift can be explained by the daily life before fixed shops. For centuries, sourcing supplies meant moving between several places: the market for vegetables, the mill for flour, the well for water. Each movement constituted a “shopping trip.” The plural “the shopping trips” retains this trace: you didn’t make one trip, you made several, in several directions.
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Doing the shopping and running errands: regional variations in the Francophonie
The expression does not hold the same monopoly everywhere in the Francophone world. In Belgium, you often hear running errands, a phrase that refers to the idea of “errand” in the sense of “message to convey” or “task to execute on behalf of someone.” In Quebec, “going to the grocery store” dominates spoken language, even when the actual destination is a supermarket or a convenience store.
In French-speaking Switzerland, “doing the shopping” coexists with “running errands” depending on the cantons and generations. These variations are not anecdotal: they reveal that each region has settled on a different word for the same domestic activity.
What these expressions share is their grounding in household routine rather than the pleasure of shopping. “Doing the shopping” is not “shopping.” The first phrase carries a household obligation, while the second is a leisure activity. This distinction holds across the Francophonie, even where “doing the shopping” is not the dominant phrase.
Shopping, stores, shopping: three expressions, three intentions
People often confuse “doing the shopping,” “going to the stores,” and “shopping.” However, their common usage clearly separates them.
- Doing the shopping refers to stocking the household: food, household products, essential items. You accomplish a task, you check off a list.
- Going to the stores involves wandering between brands, often clothing or decorative, without a specific list. The pleasure of browsing is part of the activity.
- Shopping, an Anglicism that has entered common usage, adds a connotation of urban leisure. You “go shopping” with friends, rarely alone with a cart full of frozen goods.
The boundary between these three phrases lies in the intention more than the location. You can do your shopping in a shopping mall and go to the stores in a hypermarket. What changes is the posture: household necessity on one side, leisurely wandering on the other.
The verb “to do” as a marker of household task
The choice of the verb “to do” is not trivial. In French, “to do” accompanies household chores: doing the cleaning, doing the dishes, doing the laundry. The expression “doing the shopping” fits into this series. It places the stocking of the household on the same level as other repetitive daily tasks.
This linguistic attachment has a sociological dimension. For a long time, “doing the shopping” was associated with housewives, just like “doing the ironing” or “doing the cooking.” The expression still carries this imprint, even if the distribution of tasks has evolved.
Why the expression endures in the age of drive-thrus and delivery
One might expect that “doing the shopping” would disappear with drive-thrus, delivery apps, and food subscriptions. The physical movement, which underpinned the original meaning, is no longer systematic. You order from a couch, you pick up a bag from a trunk without entering the store.
The expression holds strong for a simple reason: it designates the management of supplies, not the journey. You say “I did the shopping online” without anyone raising a contradiction. The word has completed its transformation: it no longer describes a movement, but a household responsibility.
This linguistic resistance is also observed in other Romance languages. In Spanish, “hacer la compra” (literally “to do the purchase”) follows the same logic of abstraction: the verb “hacer” absorbs the task, regardless of the channel used.
- The drive-thru has eliminated the wandering through aisles, but not the word “shopping” in the mouths of users.
- Delivery apps often display “my shopping” as the title of the cart, adopting the expression without questioning it.
- Surveys on consumption habits continue to use “doing the shopping” as a category, including for digital purchases.
The expression has survived the disappearance of outdoor markets, the arrival of supermarkets, and then the advent of online commerce. Its longevity is due to its plasticity: it sticks to the activity, not the medium. As long as there is a need to feed a household, we will probably continue to say we are “doing the shopping,” even from a screen.