Sundries

Because they don't mean the same thing. "Sundry" is an adjective meaning "diverse." The noun "sundries" goes back to around 1800, meaning "sundry things." It eventually came to mean miscellaneous small things of little value, but still of some definite value. Go into the Sundries department of the general store in a small town, and you'll find things like needles and safety pins, (a subset of sundries often called "notions") as well as tweezers and dental floss holders ("toiletries") and small tubes and bottles of stuff you can probably name more readily than I can ("cosmetics").

"Odds and ends" is a slang term going back about fifty years earlier. "Odds" are leftovers from a lot (such as switchplates or banister poles), in other words, not quite enough of them to do a proper project. "Ends" are the leftover ends of bolts of cloth; again, not quite enough to sew something in the regular manner. Odds and ends are leftovers of almost no value, certainly considerably less than the "little value" that sundries have simply because they're small and that's a fair price for them.

Sundries don't cost much because they're small and simple to manufacture, but nonetheless they serve specific purposes and people need them and are willing to pay a fair price. Odds and ends don't have any obvious use or purpose; you have to be a clever carpenter, seamstress, tinker, etc., just to figure out how to use them at all to make something halfway nice or practical. Odds and ends might be junk that the owner will let you have for free, just to avoid paying someone to haul them away. Or at most, he's been waiting for someone like you to come along, clever enough to be able to use them, so you'll pay for them, but you both know you're not going to pay very much.

 

Actually you've got it backwards. "Diverse" means "sundry." "Sundry" is a good old native English word that goes all the way back to Anglo-Saxon. It's from the same root as the verb "sunder," which means to separate or divide, and the adverb "asunder," which means "in pieces." "Diverse," on the other hand, is a word the French conquerors brought over after the Norman Invasion in 1066; it's a foreign word that the English people adopted.

Well, you're sort of complaining to the wrong people. These days, the word "sundries" is used almost exclusively as a generic term for the products in a particular section of a store where women shop! Most men would have to think for a minute to come up with examples of the kinds of products that are classified as sundries. It's your word, not ours!

It's got a plural ending like undies and puppies and Commies, so it's a good bet that it would be a noun.

No no no, don't confuse the poor lady! Sundries are NOT little pieces of things, or single leftovers from a lot, that have some small residual value to someone who can figure out a good use for them. Those are "odds and ends," as I explained in an earlier post.

"Sundries" are small products that are used in sewing, washing up, putting on makeup and other traditionally feminine activities, although it also includes a few unisex tools like nail clippers. It's short for "sundry things," things of so many kinds that they're too numerous to list, but if you're a woman you'll know exactly what to expect. A man will have to ask the store manager where to find a nail clipper or a package of safety pins, and she'll tell you it's in Sundries.

My wife and I joke about a phenomenon we call "the nounless woman." Men tend to form sentences that are full of nouns but light on adjectives. We can name about eight colors. Women can name two hundred colors (and see the difference between them) and their sentences are rich and descriptive with adjectives, but when it comes to the nouns they often give up and throw in a word like "stuff." "Sundries" is an adjective pressed into service as a noun, dressed up with a plural inflection to make it look like it's correct that way!

"Sundries" is a shopkeeper's term like "notions," "toiletries" and "dry goods." It has nothing to do with science.

Every utility-shopping store like Kmart or Target has a Sundries section, although it doesn't always have a sign.

That's like saying "each and every," except it's backwards: literally, "every and each." I have more often heard "various and sundry," which is redundant since the words are virtually synonyms. It's one of those pompous phrases thrown around by petty bureaucrats and people with one more year of high school than their neighbors, to sound like they must be important because they can speak officialese.

 

I was referring to "various and sundry," which is used pompously in the U.S. I've never heard "all and sundry" on this side of the Whaleroad.

I think it is the "two countries divided by a common language" phenomenon. "Bits and bobs"--or just "bobs"--is AFAIK unknown over here. We say "bits and pieces," but it specifically means fragments, not intact items. Even "sundry" is rarely if ever used in vernacular speech; we just use the Norman word "various." And it is very pejorative--not to say that it isn't done of course--to refer to the contents of a lady's purse as "junk."

As I noted above, in the U.S. "odds and ends" has a distinctly different meaning from "sundries."

I assume that "bob" is related to "bobtail," to mean something that has been docked, shortened, cut off. So "a bob" might have originally referred to an "end," in the sense of "odds and ends," a piece of material left over from a measured cut, too short to have any obvious value.

Please review my post #4. Odds and ends are remnants. Odds are left over from "odd lots," a bulk quantity that was not completely used up, such as the last two banister poles that come in lots of two dozen but the stairway only needed 22 of them. An end is the fragment of cloth that remains when the last swath is cut from the bolt for a customer who needs a specific length to sew a piece of clothing from a seamstress's pattern. An end is not enough material to make anything out of, but a clever seamstress will combine it with other ends to sew something lovely together out of mix-and-match prints.

The same concept of "ends" applies to any commodity that comes in long pieces and is cut to order, such as pipe, lumber, chain, wire, rope.

Odds and ends are a random assortment of leftovers that have very little value except to a creative person who can find a use for them. Sundries are small, standard products that are quite necessary and have specific uses and prices, like safety pins.