brick-and-mortar

adjective

brick-and-mor·​tar ˈbrik-ən(d)-ˈmȯr-tər 

variants or bricks-and-mortar

: relating to or being a traditional business serving customers in a building as contrasted to an online business

a brick-and-mortar store

Examples of brick-and-mortar in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

As any local shop owner will tell you, running a brick-and-mortar business in the age of Amazon is an uphill battle. —Phil Wahba, Fortune, 29 Jan. 2026

Six years after Amazon opened its first brick-and-mortar grocery store in Woodland Hills, the company decided to wind up that experiment. —Los Angeles Times, 28 Jan. 2026

Amazon will also close 15 of its Amazon Go locations as the company turns away from brick-and-mortar grocery stores to concentrate on online same-day delivery and its Whole Foods Market brand. —Darrell Smith, Sacbee.com, 28 Jan. 2026

Many of those locations will be converted into Whole Foods Market stores, a brick-and-mortar chain Amazon has owned since 2017. —Megan Poinski, Forbes.com, 28 Jan. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1975, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for brick-and-mortar

• colporteur
• exporter
• headquarter
• importer
• reporter
• supporter
• transporter
• mortar
• quarter
• shorter
• sorter