Do You Call It a Shopping Cart or a Buggy?

Quick question: What do you call this thing?

As a native Alabamian, I put my groceries in a buggy. Always have and always will. In fact, I find it a little jarring when someone calls it a shopping cart.

I know this is irrational—because saying "shopping cart" clearly makes more sense—but buggy is as deeply ingrained in my psyche as “y’all” and “bless your heart.”

As it turns out, there are quite a few names for the wheeled grocery-toting contraption.

According to Harvard's Dialect Study, most Northern and Western U.S. states prefer the term “shopping cart,” Southerners (with the exception of Floridians) tend to say “buggy.”

TBH, that’s pretty much what I expected.

Here’s what I didn’t see coming, though: Apparently people in the Northeastern U.S. put their groceries in a “wagon” or a “carriage.”

I, for one, am stunned by this news. (To be fair, I’m easily shocked.)

Crazier still, people in Britain call it a “shopping trolley.”

It’s a wild world out there.

Anyway, that’s the grocery store etymology lesson you never asked for. You’re welcome.