baggage

noun

Etymology: From Middle English bagage, from Old French bagage, baguage, from bague (“bundle, sack”), of Germanic/North Germanic origin, probably from the same ultimate source as Old Norse baggi (“pack, bundle”). Compare also bag. By surface analysis, bag + -age. The old meaning of "nasty woman" likely derives from the sense of "something awkward to be carried" (compare faggot).

1. Portable cases, large bags, and similar equipment for manually carrying, pushing, or pulling personal items while traveling

   “Please put your baggage in the trunk.”

   “As soon as they had determined on their course, Ya-nei slid under the bed, and made himself a place among the baggages.”

2. Factors, especially psychological ones, which interfere with a person's ability to function effectively.

   “This person has got a lot of emotional baggage.”

   “[…]How much shall I honour one, who has a stronger propensity to poetry, and has got a greater name in it, if he performs his promise to me of putting away these idle baggages after his sacred espousal.”

3. A woman. A female, especially one who is saucy, impudent.

   “"Hang thee, young baggage, disobedient wretch! I tell thee what: get thee to church o’ Thursday, Or never after look me in the face. Speak not; reply not; do not answer me."”

   “Betty and Molly (they were soft-hearted baggages) felt for their master--pitied their poor master!”

4. An army's portable equipment; its baggage train.

   “Friedrich decides to go down the River; he himself to Lowen, perhaps near twenty miles farther down, but where there is a Bridge and Highway leading over; Prince Leopold, with the heavier divisions and baggages, to Michelau, some miles nearer, and there to build his Pontoons and cross.”

   “In Poland, for example, the unknown Bolesław Bierut, who appeared in 1944 in the baggage of the Red Army, and who played a prominent role as a ‘non-party figure’ in the Lublin Committee, turned out to be a Soviet employee formerly working for the Comintern.”