Baggage vs. Luggage

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Tricia Roy. I’m calling from Washington, D.C.

Hi, Tricia.

How are you doing?

Doing well, and yourself?

Yeah, we’re all good here.

Great. I had a question about the words luggage and baggage today.

I’ve been traveling quite frequently, and I realized that while I think of these terms conceptually the same way, I use them differently.

So, for example, while I go to the store to buy luggage, once I purchase it, I use baggage and I pack my baggage.

I check my baggage.

I claim my baggage.

I haul my baggage.

And I could even be said to have my own personal baggage, which is another sort of use for the term.

So I was wondering why there are these two terms and am I using them correctly as they were intended?

And why are they out there?

What a great set of questions.

Yeah, you don’t exactly go to your therapist to talk about your emotional luggage.

Not really.

I never really thought about that.

It’s really true.

Yeah, when I think of luggage, I think of the price is right.

Right, this fancy leather kit.

New luggage!

Exactly.

Yeah.

But you hit upon something which I think gets to the bottom of this.

I did.

It’s luggage when you buy it.

But once you put stuff in it, it more or less turns into baggage.

Right?

So baggage is kind of about the stuff inside as much as it is about the container.

Right?

Baggage is the thing being carried.

You would never call the contents of your suitcase your luggage.

It’s the whole apparatus, right?

Right.

Yeah, that’s true.

You might refer to the things inside the luggage as baggage.

But you never refer to things inside the baggage as luggage.

Yeah, Trisha, you’d never go to luggage claim, would you?

No.

I wanted to know, Tricia, if you could tell us why you’re not sure that you’re doing it right.

I just wanted to double check, I guess.

Okay.

Too many Fs on English papers in fourth grade?

Possibly.

You have some emotional luggage about language.

That’s what you’re saying.

I just wanted to know.

I mean, it seems odd to me that there are these two terms that when I think conceptually about them,

I visualize a piece of luggage, whether or not it’s empty or full.

But I use them and everyday speak very differently.

So I just thought it was very interesting.

I wasn’t sure why that was.

That’s interesting because it’s like the baggage is what you lug around.

So why isn’t the baggage the luggage?

Right.

These subtleties are the kind of thing that native speakers just do automatically.

We understand them.

We parse them.

We use them automatically.

We think about them on long plane rides.

Thanks a lot.

If you were to do a Venn diagram of luggage and baggage, there would be a huge overlap,

Maybe three quarters, 80%, right, of overlap of meaning,

Where one or the other could be used.

And then there’s a tiny crescent sliver on the outside of this Venn diagram

On both sides of luggage and baggage where one term is best used

And the other one is best not used, right?

I’m liking picturing this, Grant.

I’m not sure what the rules are, though.

Well, the rules generally, like I was saying before, as far as I can tell,

Baggage is often but not always the things inside the luggage.

And the luggage is often but not always the container itself.

And that’s where we start to get the differences.

And you’re going to find exceptions, absolutely.

And you’re going to find exceptions between our dialect of English and the one spoken in the U.K., right?

So there’s no universal on this.

Trust your native speaker intuition.

Stand up straight.

Take a deep breath.

Just go forth and use your baggage.

Oh, Tricia, who knew that this was going to be such a complicated question?

Thank you so much for calling.

And thank you for letting us muddle the waters.

Thank you.

Or muddy the waters.

Thanks, Tricia.

I appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Happy trails.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Oh.

Baggage and luggage.

We have to throw this out, right?

I think we do.

I mean, not in the garbage, but out to the listeners.

No.

What do you think about this?

Do you see a difference between baggage and luggage?

I’m talking to you, the listener.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your differences to words@waywordradio.org.