Robert L. Hunt

I have been asked about the difference between these two words — daily we see them in the crowded buses here as well. When I hear the word “baggage” (an note that both luggage and baggage are uncountable nouns, so they do not take an “s”), I immediately think of baggage trains, baggage wagons of the pioneering days in the west in U.S. movies. With mass air travel, both luggage and baggage have acquired dual, and then multiple nationality as words.

Luggage disappears in the confusion, you can have an insurance policy that pays up to xxx yuan/person for loss of baggage, passengers’ luggage coming through the baggage claim area had been badly damaged, etc. I feel there is almost an equal number of instances of both words.

There are a few collocations that seem to be more or less fixed, e.g. excess baggage, a baggage area, a baggage claim, and a baggage handler. There are still railway stations in the world that have “left-luggage” offices. Did you know that the most common left luggage item in Japan’s huge network of railways is the umbrella. The second is the briefcase!

Some trains have the label “luggage” attached to the relevant storage shelves. In the U.S., a person who looks after the checked baggage of passengers on a train is a baggage man. The same word is used for a passenger porter in a hotel. At air terminals, the term “hand luggage” and “hand baggage” seem to be freely used in both the U.K. and the U.S.

In figurative usage, baggage is the customary word everywhere. A man who is single and is looking for a wife often stipulates in newspapers that he wants a woman who “must have no emotional baggage” to bring into the relationship, i.e. the man does not want any responsibilities for any obligations the woman may have, as for example, from a former relationship. I have read of an “ancient baggage of criminology” too.