baggage n.
1. a worthless man; also adj.
Huarte’s Examination of Men’s Wits 209: They might soundly sleepe on his eyes, although by nature he were a baggage. | (trans.)||
Life of Guzman Pt II Bk III 243: Less harme it were a great deale, that a few, and those baggage-people, should not be rich. | (trans.)||
Nugae Venales 24: As two Doctors were walking, an unhappy Baggage emptied a Chamber-pot by chance on their heads. | ||
Seven Poor Men of Sydney 116: God bless me, he’s a useless baggage. | ||
Beano Comic Library No. 190 59: Silly old baggage! |
2. rubbish, nonsense; also adj.
Comedye Concernyng Three Lawes (1550) Jii: send.: I wolde thy Gospell, and thou, were both nowe in hell. evang.: Why and shall this baggage, put by the worde of God. pseud.: Thou wylt not be answered, tyl thou fele a sharper rod. | ||
Toxophilus (1761) I 109: A boke [...] wherein he weaveth up many broken ended matters, and settes oute much riff-raffe, pelfery, trumpery, baggage, and beggerie ware. | ||
Hist. of Reformation in Laing Works (1846) I 191: Pilgremage, pardonis, and otheris sic baggage . | ||
Steele Glas Hiiii: When brewers put, no bagage in their beere [...] Where vintners mix, no water with their wine. | ||
Anatomie of Abuses 59: Most of them feed upon [...] Hearbes, Weedes, and suche other baggage. | ||
Pierce’s Supererogation 63: I [...] will definitiuely pronounce him, the very Baggage of new writers. | ||
Vertues Common-wealth n.p.: The very scum, rascallitie, and baggage of the people, theeues, cut-purses, shifters, cousoners. | ||
Worthy Communicant 203: Thistles, nettles and such like baggage trash [F&H]. | ||
Memorial of John Williams II 128: Books he filcht what he would; For four Cellars of Wine, Syder, Ale, beer, with Wood, Hay, Corn, and the like [...] he gave not an account of Six-pence, but spent it upon Baggage, and loose Franions. | ||
Reprisal I viii: I’m a soldier, and never burden my brain with unnecessary baggage. |
3. a woman, esp. one considered immoral or sexually autonomous [the image of woman as a man’s burden or encumbrance; the initial use is often synon. with a camp-follower (a woman who follows the military) but by 17C is more commonly found as a comb., e.g. a saucy baggage, a sly baggage, and as such is relatively affectionate; however, there may also be links to Fr. bagasse, a prostitute, a wanton].
Grim The Collier of Croydon III i: Away you Baggage, hold your peace you Wretch. | ||
Mother Bombie V iii: The baggage begins to blush. | ||
Honest Whore Pt 1 III iii: Thou wert honest at flue, and now th’art a Puncke at fifteene: thou wert yesterday a simple whore, and now th’art a cunning Conny-catching Baggage to day. | ||
Chaste Maid in Cheapside II ii: A politic baggage, she makes us swear to keep it. | ||
Amanda or the Reformed Whore 42: A Bridewell baggage, that deserves the lash. | (prisoner)||
Love’s Mistress I i: A young green-sickness baggage. | ||
Pleasant Notes I viii 61: No doubt the baggages in the coach were his sisters. | ||
Virgil Travestie (1765) Bk IV 87: This Baggage that still took a pride to / Slander and backbite poor Queen Dido. | ||
Love in a Wood II i: Yes, she’s one of your brisk silly Baggages. | ||
Rover III iii: A Rape! Come, come, you lye, you Baggage, you lye. | ||
Scourge for Poor Robin 7: He meets with some little Town-baggage who picks his Pocket, and in requital bestows upon him a swinging Clap. | ||
Lucky Chance III i: The baggage was damnably in love with a young fellow they call Bellmour. | ||
Love for Love V i: Odd, you’re cunning, a wary baggage. | ||
Beau Defeated II i: The Baggage is loose as the wanton Winds, yet she is Witty beyond her Sex. | ||
Hudibras Redivivus II:3 19: Next came a Pack of mincing Jades, / Attending as her Grace’s Maids / Of Honour, tho’ alas! the Title / Avail’d the Baggages but little. | ||
Lives of the Gamesters (1930) 151: She, being a cunning baggage [...] persisted still that it was done by witchcraft. | ||
Artifice Act IV: O, you are a tempting Baggage. | ||
Devil to Pay I i: Why, you most pestilent Baggage, will you be hoop’d? | ||
Memoirs of the Life of Lady H 38: Son, the impudent Baggage will not go. | ||
Peregrine Pickle (1964) 354: She was a pert baggage, and did not deserve a liard. | ||
Upholsterer I i: Stark-staring mad in Love with a Couple of Baggages not worth a Groat. | ||
Vicar of Wakefield (1883) 222: Tell them they are two arrant little baggages. | ||
Rivals (1776) II ii: Ah, then, you baggage! I’ll make it a truth presently. | ||
Contrast V ii: Oh! how I loved the little baggage! | ||
Walsingham II 279: O! grand creatures! [...] fine jades! wonderful baggages! | ||
Spirit of Irish Wit 110: ‘They [i.e. nut shells] are all empty, you baggages’. | ||
Yankey in England 51: new.: I must go with the baggage. mrs. n.: With the baggage! | ||
Doctor Syntax, Wife (1868) 267/1: Men the marriage state deride / Some folly of their own to hide, / When in a wife they have miscarried; / And some low, vulgar baggage married. | ||
Spitalfields Weaver I ii: Don’t accuse your wife until you know she’s a baggage. | ||
‘How to Win Her’ in Facetious Songster in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) III 261: The baggage will think herself really divine, / And scorn you sure as a gun. | ||
Handy Andy 145: ‘Come here! you baggage!’ he cried to Augusta. | ||
Young Tom Hall (1926) 313: What the deuce did you bring that nasty old baggage here for? | ||
Autobiog. of a Female Slave 324: I had observed her during the day as a garrulous, racketty sort of baggage. | ||
Dreamthorp 12: And Beauty, who is something of a coquette [...] goes off in a huff. Let the baggage go! | ||
Queen’s Sailors III 279: Here is a generous heart wot will be chucked away on some good-for-nothing baggage as soon as he lands. | ||
Southern Reporter (Selkirk) 25 June 4/4: Then he saw a white hand [...] thrown back over the arm of a chair. ‘A woman! The impertinent baggage!’. | ||
Bulletin (Sydney) 15 Oct. 8/1: It isn’t so much the glass or two of drink, but the nasty, good-for-nothing baggages who serve them, me dear. | ||
Mord Em’ly 260: None of your listenin’ through the key-’ole [...] you inquisitive ole baggage, you. | ||
Amblers 39: Go to, you saucy baggage! | ||
Hist. of Mr Polly (1946) 61: She mucked up my mushroom bed, the baggage! | ||
Fighting Blood 51: Them shameless young baggages from the school, with their short skirts and boys’ haircuts. | ||
Coonardoo 48: I thought you’d be glad to get the baggage off your hands. | ||
Redheap (1965) 71: ‘Sells liquor o’ the sawbeth’ ‘The daughter’s a baggage’. | ||
Life and Death at the Old Bailey 231: A pert cockney baggage with a cold sparkle in her eyes. | ||
Lassie Come-Home 69: You’re an impertinent baggage. | ||
Story of a N.Z. Sheep Farm 207: That girl’s no better than a baggage! | ||
Secret Swinger 162: A little teaser, she was. I said: ‘Look here, you baggage, either come home with me or have done.’. | ||
All Night Stand 142: Baggages, hoydens, kittens, minxes, colleens. | ||
Bk of Irish Farmers’ Jokes 9: ‘Excuse me sir,’ said an official to the farmer, ‘you must have your baggage disinfected.’ ‘The cheek of you, you impudent pup,’ said the farmer. ‘My wife has no diseases.’. | ||
Death Minus Zero (1998) 42: You wanna go round screwing some little baggage you just happened to run into, that’s fine. | ||
Beyond Black 247: ‘Don’t play the innocent wiv me,’ he said. ‘You evil baggage.’. |
4. a woman due to be sent to South America in the white slave trade.
DU ‘Baggage’ means women, in the phrase of the men of the Centre. | Road to Buenos Ayres in||
in DU. | Cities of Sin in||
Lowspeak. |
5. (US gay) the male genitals.
Queens’ Vernacular. | ||
Gay Sl. Dict. 🌐. |
6. (US) one who watches a gambling game and advises the players but does not participate.
Lowspeak. |
In compounds
(US) a homosexual prostitute who offers active sex to clients, i.e. as well as the usual passive participation in sodomy, he will play the active sodomizer and also offer fellatio.
(ref. to 1940s) Queens’ Vernacular 112: Hustlers too have their sexual proclivities: a goofer (’40s) or a baggage [box]-boy allows only his cock to be the currency of sexual sale. | ||
Gay Sl. Dict. 🌐 baggage-boy: a hustler that only allows his cock to be of sexual sale. |
(US) a pimp.
Wkly Varieties (Boston, MA) 3 Sept. 7/3: You are a pretty good baggage master, but ‘can’t keep a hotel’. |
SE in slang uses
In compounds
(UK Und.) that member of a pickpocketing team who is handed the booty and then runs off with it.
Regulator 19: The Bagege Man, alias that is he that carries off the Booty. | ||
Narrative of Street-Robberies 8: They us’d him only as a Baggage Man; that is, to loop off with the Cole when they had made a Prey. | ||
(con. 1710–25) Tyburn Chronicle II in (1999) xxvi: The Baggage Man He that carries off the Booty. | ||
Whole Art of Thieving . |
(US) the stomach.
High Times and Hard Times (1967) 132: Arter I got my baggage-room full, I sot down ag’in. | in Inge
1. a railway porter.
Atlas (N.Y.) 4 July 1/2–3: [illus. of porter carrying a trunk on his shoulders] The Baggage Smasher. | ||
Commercial Advertiser (N.Y.) 8 Jan. 1/3–4: The 4th Class [of ‘vagrant, idle and vicious children’] are boys — they are termed ‘baggage smashers;’ they congregate around steamboat landings [...] apparently for the purpose of carrying parcels for individuals. | ||
Western Reserve Chron. (Warren, OH) 24 Oct. 1/7: The Baggage Smasher, bursting open a trunk by too hastily dropping it upon the deck, discovers a fatherless boy asleep inside! | ||
Ingham Papers 59: [The Boston hackman] is a wholly different man from the baggage-smasher of Babel, or from the cabman of London. | ||
Americanisms 358: The baggage-smasher, as the porter is commonly called, handles his burdens with appalling recklessness. | ||
Pall Mall Gazette 14 June n.p.: The Saratoga trunks are hurled recklessly by the ‘baggage-smashers’ on to the deck . | ||
Our Iron Roads 325: An unknown genius [...] the other day entrusted a trunk, with a hive of bees in it, to the tender mercies of a Syracuse ‘baggage-smasher’. | ||
Butler Wkly Times (MO) 2 Sept. 3/3: The baggage-smasher has found a material that defies him. A papier mache trunk. | ||
Reno (NV) Eve. Gazette 28 Apr. 2/2: A railroad porter is a ‘baggage smasher’. | ||
L.A. Herald 19 Dec. 16/4: Just then the baggage smasher came in and threw them all out. | ||
Monroe City Democrat (MO) 11 July 6/5: ‘Look at that trunk,’ exclaimed the woman. [...] ‘Yessum, I’m looking at it,’ said the baggage smasher. | ||
Eve. Star (DC) 2 May 21/5: [advert] The Neverbreak wardrobe truink [...] is made to withstand the hardest onslauight of the baggage smasher. | ||
Dict. Amer. Sl. 4: baggage smasher. Hotel porter who handles trunks. | ||
World to Win 115: The red-capped baggage-smashers were crying: ‘Take yo’ bag, suh?’. | ||
Criminal Sl. (rev. edn). |
2. one who steals unguarded luggage from railway stations.
N.Y. Herald 3 Sept. 2/3: [headline] A GANG OF BAGGAGE SMASHERS CAPTURED. | ||
N.Y. Herald 2/3: BAGGAGE SMASHER. -- A black fellow [...] was arrested [...] on a charge of stealing a valise. | ||
Plu-ri-bus-tah 85–6: You shall there be met by swindlers, Shoulder-hitters, baggage smashers, And all kinds of shameless rascals. | ||
Gay Life in N.Y. 11: He had heard of ‘baggage smashers’ who made away with countrymen’s trunks and left the owners shirtless in a strange city. | ||
in | Handy-Book of Lit. Curiosities (1892) 78: The baggage-smasher is indeed a terror .
3. a coarse, brutal person.
N.-Y. Trib. 23 Nov. n.p.: Gamblers, emigrant-robbers, baggage-smashers, and all the worst classes of the city [W&F]. |