Do you call your cart at the grocery store a shopping cart, a shopping carriage, a grocery cart, or a buggy? The term buggy seems to be particularly widespread in the South. This is part of a complete episode.
Leave a comment
2 comments
More from this show
According to Gobsmacked: The British Invasion of American English (Bookshop|Amazon) by Ben Yagoda, the word smarmy, meaning “unctuous” or “ingratiating,” may come from a 19th-century magazine contest, in which readers sent in...
Mary Beth in Greenville, South Carolina, wonders: Why do we say four-oh-nine for the number 409 instead of four-zero-nine or four-aught-nine? What are the rules for saying either zero or oh or aught or ought to indicate that arithmetical symbol...
Ok, recently I re-listened to this episode from last year with your comments on the southern usage of buggy for shopping cart. My 80+ year old mother, to this day, still uses this term and I did all through my childhood. The problem is that she grew up in Milwaukee, WI, in the heart of German culture. Never lived anywhere south of Chicago. How can we explain this?
FYI, locals here in Hawaii call shopping cars wagons as well. And refrigerators are still called ice boxes!