BAGGAGE

I'm on the road (i.e. air), so another travel-related post. Baggage, from bag, of course, is the collection of stuff that one packs up to take with him or her on a journey. It also has been used to refer to the portable equipment of an army that has to be packed up and moved around. 


In the sense that people generally don't like to carry stuff around, baggage has taken on some rather negative connotations beyond the usual "encumbrances" (many of them becoming obsolete): rubbish, dirt, corrupt matter, trashy stuff, dregs, riff-raff, the rites of Catholic worship (after the reformation), worthless people, and, my favorite, "A worthless good-for nothing woman; a woman of disreputable or immoral life, a strumpet." This last one is illustrated by the OED with a quote from 1601: "Every common soldior carrying with him his she-baggage." And another from 1712: "That Wife dying, I took another, but both proved to be idle Baggages."


I will hope that on the trip on which I am about to embark my baggage (none of it she-baggage) arrives without incident. 


(Perhaps I will investigate "luggage" in another post).

P