English

Noun

baggage ‎(usually uncountable, plural baggages)

1. (usually uncountable) Luggage; traveling equipment

   Please put your baggage in the trunk.

   • 1929, Charles Georges Souli, Eastern Shame Girl:

     As soon as they had determined on their course, Ya-nei slid under the bed, and made himself a place among the baggages.

   • 1991 September 20, Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Love Films: A Cassavetes Retrospective”, in Chicago Reader:

     Alone, she clings to her baggages on the street.

   • 2014 August 21, “A brazen heist in Paris [print version: International New York Times, 22 August 2014, p. 8]”, in The New York Times:

     The audacious hijacking in Paris of a van carrying the baggage of a Saudi prince to his private jet is obviously an embarrassment to the French capital, whose ultra-high-end boutiques have suffered a spate of heists in recent months.

2. (uncountable, informal) Factors, especially psychological ones, which interfere with a person's ability to function effectively.

   He's got a lot of emotional baggage.

   • 1846, Henry Francis Cary, Lives of the English Poets:

     [<span title="Yet he was unreasonable enough to continue his expectations that Mason should do what he had, without any apparent compunction, omitted to do himself; for after speaking of Brown, the unfortunate author of Barbarossa, who was also an ecclesiastic, he adds: "">…] How much shall I honour one, who has a stronger propensity to poetry, and has got a greater name in it, if he performs his promise to me of putting away these idle baggages after his sacred espousal.

3. (obsolete, countable, pejorative) A woman.
   • 1828, Various, The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. 288:

     Betty and Molly (they were soft-hearted baggages) felt for their master--pitied their poor master!

   • 1897, Charles Whibley, A Book of Scoundrels:

     But he had a roving eye and a joyous temperament; and though he loved me better than any of the baggages to whom he paid court, he would not visit me so often as he should.

   • 1910, Gertrude Hall, Chantecler:

     But your perverse attempts to wring blushes from little baggages in convenient corners outrage my love of Love!

4. (military, countable and uncountable) An army's portable equipment; its baggage train.
   • 1865, Thomas Carlyle, History of Friedrich II of Prussia:

     Friedrich decides to go down the River; he himself to Lowen, perhaps near twenty miles farther down, but where there is a Bridge and Highway leading over; Prince Leopold, with the heavier divisions and baggages, to Michelau, some miles nearer, and there to build his Pontoons and cross.

   • 2007, Norman Davies, No Simple Victory: World War II in Europe, 1939–1945, New York: Penguin, p 305:

     In Poland, for example, the unknown Bolesław Bierut, who appeared in 1944 in the baggage of the Red Army, and who played a prominent role as a ‘non-party figure’ in the Lublin Committee, turned out to be a Soviet employee formerly working for the Comintern.

Synonyms

• (luggage): luggage, gear, stuff, bags

Derived terms

Translations