baggage
/ˈbaɡɪdʒ
/noun [mass noun]
1Suitcases and bags containing personal belongings packed for travelling; luggage: we collected our baggage before clearing customs [as modifier]: a baggage allowance...
- A sheet left inside suitcase luggage or travel baggage can prevent musty odors.
- The new powers, announced yesterday, include the authority to search personal baggage of travellers arriving from countries outside the European Union.
- She travels with her baggage allowance of 70 pounds.
Synonyms
luggage, suitcases, cases, bags, trunks;
things, belongings, possessions, kit, equipment, effects, goods and chattels, impedimenta, paraphernalia, accoutrements, rig, tackle
informal gear, stuff, traps, dunnage
British informal clobber
South African informal trek
1.1The portable equipment of an army: the artillery and baggage rumbled along the road...
- The Roman army baggage train contained all the features of subsequent logistic tails - food, ammunition, and specialist equipment.
- The retreating army and its baggage carried the plague home with them in autumn 1349.
- Gallus eventually got his army away in the night, but he left behind 6,000 dead and all of his artillery and baggage.
2Past experiences or long-held attitudes perceived as burdensome encumbrances: the emotional baggage I’m hauling around...
- If you want to drop a load of emotional baggage and experience some psychic weight loss, Gemini time makes it easy to lighten up.
- And that could be said for everybody except Paddy, who carries the least burdensome emotional baggage.
- Exonerating can help free family members up from unnecessary burdens of past baggage.
3 [count noun] dated A cheeky or disagreeable girl or woman: she was a mercenary little baggage...
- And he said she was a baggage to have said what she had said.
- I always knew she was a baggage.
- She's a baggage, and shall never see another penny of mine,--that's flat!
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French bagage (from baguer 'tie up'), or bagues 'bundles'; perhaps related to bag.