luggage

Etymology

It is formed from English lug (“to drag, pull with effort”) + -age,^[2][3][4][5] after baggage.^[6][7][8] The AHD calls it probably lug plus the end of baggage.^[9] The verb lug is of Scandinavian origin; compare Swedish lugga (“to pull by the hair”) and Norwegian lugge.^[4][3][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

What has to be lugged about, inconveniently heavy baggage: 1596, in Thomas Nashe's Have with You to Saffron-Walden.^[2][4][10] Merriam-Webster dates it to 1595.^[11]

Semantic evolution

In early use the word carried the idea of burden.^[2][10] Johnson (1755) defined it as "any thing cumbrous and unweildy that is to be carried away; any thing of more weight than value", quoting The Tempest.^[12][3] It was also the baggage of an army,^[2][6] and between 1614 and 1693 a luggage was an encumbrance.^[2] Figurative uses appear from 1612, in John Donne.^[2] The burdensome sense has faded: in the 20th century luggage became the usual British word for a traveller's bags, where American English mostly says baggage.^[3][2] From 1915 it has also meant the bags and suitcases themselves as goods for sale.^[2]

Timeline

• 1595 – Merriam-Webster's first date.^[11]
• 1596 – heavy baggage to be lugged about.^[2][4]
• 1612 – figurative use.^[2]
• 1614 – an encumbrance (obsolete after 1693).^[2]
• 1915 – bags and suitcases designed for travellers' belongings.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. The suitcases, bags and trunks that hold a traveller's belongings; baggage.
2. (figurative) Something burdensome that one carries along.

Word family

• luggageless
• left-luggage office

Related words

• lug
• baggage

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
9. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
10. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.