Also, five-and-dime. A retail store selling a variety of items for very low prices. The original store of this kind (five-and-ten-cent store) dates from the first half of the 1900s, and although current prices are far more than five or ten cents, the name persists. Sometimes varied to nickel and dime, the term also came to be used as an adjective meaning low-paid, as in Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, a 2001 book by Barbara Ehrenreich.