boutique
boo-TEEK
/buːˈtiːk/
A small, stylish, and specialized business, often a hotel or clothing shop.
A small, stylish, and specialized business, often a hotel or clothing shop, offering highly personalized or unique products.
The story behind the word. From French boutique, from Occitan botica, from Greek apotheke (storehouse). It traveled through several languages to mean a small, specialized shop or hotel.
Word relationships
- specialty: Specialty refers to focusing on a specific product, while boutique emphasizes high style, small scale, and luxury.
- niche: Niche refers to a specific market segment, whereas boutique describes the actual stylish, small-scale business.
- chain: A chain is a large group of identical businesses owned by the same company, lacking unique character.
Commonly confused with
- booty: Booty refers to valuable goods or plunder, completely unrelated to a stylish shop or hotel.
Collocations
- boutique hotel
- boutique clothing
- boutique agency
Example sentences
- "They preferred staying in boutique hotels because of their unique charm and local character." Choosing a hotel.
Memory hook
A boutique has beautiful, unique things in a tiny shop. Boutique is small and unique.
When not to use
Do not use to describe large, mass-market, or standardized chain hotels.
Fun facts
- The word 'boutique' shares an ancient Greek ancestor (apotheke) with 'apothecary' (a pharmacy) and the Spanish word 'bodega' (a grocery store).
Related words
Also appears in
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