Separated by a Common Language

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Why did the UK retain the use of baggage as a disapproving and sexist term for a woman- one of so many? I grew up in Canada and Scotland. My Scottish grandmother would occasionally refer to someone she didn't like as a "baggage". Luckily she was a pretty nice person so I didn't hear it a lot. And in Canada in my unenlightened youth we regularly referred to unpleasant women as "bags" although adult men would refer to "old bags."

[Southern English, b.mid-1960s]
My feeling is that (except when used disparagingly of a woman, as the previous commenter says), "baggage" is an American word. When I'm travelling, all the stuff I take along with me - suitcases, trunks, rucksacks, laptop cases or whatever else - are all items of luggage. Even if the sign says "baggage reclaim" I think I would refer to it as "luggage reclaim". I really don't think I would ever use the word "baggage" in any sense but the metaphorical - and that feels American, too.

American rail travel does indeed still have "baggage cars", although checking baggage on a train journey is not so frequent these days (there is enough space in a passenger car to hold most people's normal baggage, so it tends to be used only for bulky items like bicycles or sporting equipment). Some Amtrak trains are operated in "push-pull" mode where there is a locomotive at one end and a control cab at the other end; and rather than ordering custom passenger cars with driver's controls, Amtrak recycled obsolete locomotives by removing the engine and using the empty space as a baggage compartment -- these are known by railfans (=BrE trainspotters) as "cabbages".

I remember as a child when I was reading the Paddington books, and learning that Paddington got his name because he was found in the Paddington Station Left Luggage Office, if that meant that Paddington Station had two luggage offices, and the other one was the Right Luggage Office.

I guess it's 20 years ago now, but I travelled quite a bit by train in New Zealand when I was there. They had a luggage van. You said where you were getting off, handed your luggage up to the person in charge of the van, they stowed it. When you got off, it varied. Sometimes I got off in a big station with a lot of other people, and they'd be unloading it onto trestle tables or similar. Sometimes I got off in middle of nowhere - literally, one place there wasn't a platform and you clambered down from the carriage onto the grass. That's a LONG way down - and you pointed to whatever your luggage was (in my case a rucksack) and they'd hand it out.

Re: luggage as a word for the suitcase itself. My wife gets annoyed watching Richard Osman's House of Games when winners select as a prize "the luggage" referring to an empty suitcase. She shouts, "It's a suitcase!" She argues that luggage is what you put into it.

Up until the mid 1980s most British trains (commuter and Inter-City) had a Guard's Van that was often referred to as the Luggage Van. Luggage was placed here, along with parcels and other items they were carrying. You could put bicycles and large suitcases there as the Guard supervised the storage area. As well as conventional doors, it had large sliding doors on both sides and the capacity was about that of a modern 10ft container. They were not not separate coaches as used on a freight train (i.e. a Caboose) as the guard could easily walk through into the passngers cars. If you had a large item and knew the next stop was brief, you could walk down the corridor to get your luggage/bicycle and be ready to jump off. As passenger numbers increased, it was not unusual for the guard to open the van and a couple of dozen commuters would be standing in there. A few stops along and people filtered out in the passenger cars.

It had somehow never occurred to me that the word "luggage" is for stuff you lug along..... oh well! I remember once travelling in the luggage van, but I can't now remember why. And have we forgotten that very useful feature of trains, the luggage rack? These days, overhead luggage racks are much smaller than they used to be, and larger items have to go in "luggage stacks" at either end of the carriage.

Interesting that you say the BrE equivalent of 'train station' is 'rail station'. I would say that 'railway station' is much more common, although the US 'train station' is catching on. But simply 'station' would be used and understood by most British people to mean a train/rail/railway station. I've seen it argued that 'train station' parallels 'bus station', and also that it's the train that becomes stationary, not the rails, so there is some logic to 'train station'.

[BrE, 60's (age, DoB, both)] "Left luggage" has always been slightly confusing to me as it means two different services: (i) storing bags to avoid carrying them around, and (ii) retrieving lost items left on the train. I always assumed the same term is used because, in the old days, both functions were performed by the same staff, in the same place. But they have always seemed to me to be different services.

Though I am familiar with the two words, I didn't know their etymology. Quite fascinating.

When you wrote "I can't remember the last time I checked my bags on a train journey" I thought you meant "checked to see that I know where they are and no-one has stolen them". But maybe you meant what British people would say "I can't remember the last time I checked my bags in on a train journey". "Checked in" being our term for "Handing them over to an official for safe stowage". "Checked" on its own just means "verified status is satisfactory".

Of course there's the old-fashioned military term 'baggage train'. In 'Henry V' Shakespeare has the Welsh Captain Fluellen, for whom English is very much a second language, exclaim indignantly "Kill the poys (boys) and the luggage!" after an attack on the English baggage train.

40yo Midwestern American here. I really only use baggage in the term baggage claim, otherwise I use luggage for suitcases or bags for more generic "all my stuff I'm bringing on this trip, including purse or backpack."

i live in america and i say luggage.... i hear people say luggage in america more then baggage...

b. London, 1970s. I recently read a non-fiction essay in an American local paper called 'Our luggage takes a vacation'. At first glance, a suitable British English translation would seem to be 'Our luggage goes on holiday'.

But the wit of the title comes from the dual meaning of 'luggage' in American English, usable both for heavily stuffed bags and for empty suitcases. The article describes the author's father's holiday habit of giving away not only the contents of his over-full cases, but also the cases themselves.

As the Richard Osman story above illustrates, 'luggage' in the meaning of empty suitcases sounds like sales language to me and not something I would ever say - though my American wife uses it that way. So a better British translation of the article title might be 'Our suitcases go on holiday', but (at least to my ear) that doesn't quite capture the ambiguity of the American original.

Second quick thought: 'to check a bag' as the verb for handing over your bags still sounds American to me. I'd always use 'to check in a bag' and 'checked-in bags' (never 'checked bags'), at least when speaking to older Brits.