Luggage

How to spell luggage

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce luggage

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does luggage mean?

1. nounThe bags, suitcases, and cases in which a traveller's belongings are packed for a journey.

Luggage in a sentence

• The airline lost his luggage on the connecting flight.

• She wheeled her luggage through the busy terminal.

Where does luggage come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Luggage comes from the English verb 'lug', meaning to drag or pull something heavy, with the collective noun suffix '-age' added on top. The verb 'lug' itself is probably of Scandinavian origin, related to dialect words for pulling or hauling by the hair or by a heavy load, and it carried the flavour of effort and weight from the very beginning. By the late 1500s 'luggage' had come to mean, quite literally, the heavy stuff a traveller has to lug about. That practical, slightly grumbling sense is preserved today: luggage is the burden you cart from place to place. The spelling trap is the doubled 'g' followed by the soft '-age' ending, which makes the word sound like 'lug-ij' even though it is written with that tidy '-age' tail shared by 'baggage' and 'package'.

How the word is built

• lug (to drag or haul, the verb)
• -age (noun suffix meaning a collection or result of)