Grocery Carts and Buggies

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Michelle Abramson. I’m calling from Lexington, Massachusetts.

Hi, Michelle. Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

What’s cooking?

Well, I got very interested in one of the topics on the Way With Words Facebook page. Somebody had put a picture of the thing that you ride around in the grocery store with, which I have always called a wagon.

But you ride in it? You, like, climb aboard and then, like, push yourself along?

No, no, like the little, you know, the shopping cart, wagon, buggy. I was trying not to say what it was called so that you could picture it in your head. But, yeah, somebody posted a picture of it and said, what do you call this? And there were many, many, many responses, which you probably, I think you monitor it, you probably saw it.

Oh, yeah, we read it. We dip in as often as we can. Most people said a shopping cart. Some people said buggy, and they were from the south. And some people from New England refer to it as a carriage.

Sure, right. And it’s a trolley in England. But anyway, I got really interested, so I thought, well, let me put this picture on a couple of other Facebook pages that I, you know, my personal things and ask people the same thing. And I thought, well, the people that I grew up with are definitely going to call it a wagon. And they didn’t. Most people called it a shopping cart. A couple of people called it a wagon. Sure enough, I was in the grocery store with my mother. She was visiting over Thanksgiving. And she said, let me just go get a wagon. That’s where I got it. Now, my mother’s from Mississippi.

Oh, she is?

Yes.

So I said, I mean, she’s lived in New York for 60 years or something on Long Island. That’s culture shock. I said to her, did you ever hear of it called a buggy? And she said, no, I never heard that. It’s a wagon and maybe a shopping cart. And it’s like, she said, where’d that come from? And then I explained this whole thing. And she said, well, that’s very interesting.

So I’m just wondering where I got this wagon other than my mother coming up with it, and I’m sure she didn’t make it up.

No, she didn’t make it up, but you probably got it from her anyway, and she’s been in New York long enough that she’s far more New York than she is Mississippi.

-huh, yeah. Linguistically, I mean, she’s probably got just footmarks all over her language that have nothing to do with the South.

Oh, there’s a lot of them that do, though. Don’t ever call it a pecan to her. She’ll get…

Nice.

Oh, yeah? What does she say?

Pecan.

Oh, pecan, of course, yes. Pecan pie.

That’s awesome. You know, if you do this survey pretty much anywhere in the United States, it’s fun to talk about. Just like you. Your fieldwork is amazing, Michelle. You did exactly the right thing looking for answers there. And professional linguists have done this or dialectologists have done this and done surveys on this and found, coincidentally enough, that shopping wagon is used in New York and New Jersey and Connecticut and Massachusetts with a few little data points here and there, but mainly in that small, tightly controlled region.

Yeah, so it’s completely ordinary that you and your mother would say wagon because you’re from that part of the country and you picked it up from maybe it was what was used on the signs in the store or the staff at the store or your neighbors use it or when you go shopping with your aunt or somebody else, they use it. It’s completely ordinary that you should both say shopping wagon. It’s not common still even in New York, though, but it is used there more than anywhere else. I mean, plenty of people I know from New York don’t use it.

And actually, if you go to return your shopping cart in Massachusetts, where I live now, it’s going to say carriage return.

Nice.

Carriage return? I thought that was on a typewriter.

Carriage is a very, it’s like very, very Boston. Yeah, there’s no, I mean, there’s no like rhyme or reason to the shape of these dialect maps. But we do know if we survey people more than anywhere else, it’s in that part of the country. So for what it’s with, but it’s really, it’s like less than a percent. Like fewer people say it than just about anything else that we call a shopping cart.

Yeah, it’s not very many. And you know, here’s an interesting thing. This language is spread by the shopping chains. The language they use for the food, the language they use for all of the mechanics of shopping tends to be spread to their customers. So I wouldn’t be surprised if originally it started with like whatever D’Agostino’s used to be in New York or whatever.

Yeah, it was probably Wall Bounce or something like that.

Wall Bounce, yeah, exactly. Some of these chains that are long gone, right?

Yeah, yeah. Michelle, we’ve confirmed for you that you’re not weird and that you didn’t make this up.

Well, as far as we know, you seem very nice to us.

Oh, thank you.

You too. I love your show. And just know that when you say shopping wagon, it’s ordinary for a lot of people. Own it. Live with it. Love it.

Okay.

All right? Thank you so much for calling. Happy shopping.

Oh, thank you.

Bye, Michelle.

Bye-bye.

Take care now.

What do you say, Martha? What did you grow up with?

I grew up with shopping cart. I remember a few years ago reading an article about the origin of shopping carts.

Oh, yeah?

And I think they were invented by some guy to get more customers into his store. It was this huge, long article. It was really fascinating. I’ll try to find it and post it to the website.

That’d be amazing. And you know what’s funny? I love talking to people like Michelle about these things because this difference and what we call this device that we all know still persists, even though we think that this is a media-heavy country where the common misconception is that we’re all going to end up talking alike, the differences are still there, and sometimes they’re becoming more pronounced.

Yes.

It’s cool. So what have you heard when you move to someplace new? You’ve heard a term that you’ve never heard before that everybody else takes for granted? Call us about it, 877-929-9673, or talk about it in email. The address is words@waywordradio.org.