buggy n
[. . .]
5 also grocery buggy, shopping ~: A four-wheeled cart with a metal or plastic basket provided by a supermarket or other large store for customers to use while shopping. chiefly Sth, S Midl, OH, PA Cf carriage n 1
1942 Corona Daily Independent (CA) 30 July 2/5, [Advt:] You simply pick the items you need from the attractive displays and put them in a handy shopping buggy. 1943 New Castle News (PA) 9 Apr 17/2, Mrs. Smiley fell over a grocery buggy in one of the aisles of the store. 1949 Camden News (AR) 4 Aug 17/4, [Advt:] Take a basket or one of the shopping buggies. . . Then go through the aisles, and as you come to the things you want, take them from the shelf and put in basket or buggy. 1957 Portsmouth Times (OH) 10 July 9/3, The property was taken from her shopping buggy Tuesday night while she was in a downtown supermarket. 1965 Charleston Daily Mail (WV) 12 Mar 17/4, Once the buggies get outside the store, we’re in trouble. 1978 Daily Independent (Kannapolis NC) 16 Oct 3/6, Laura M. Rogers . . reported the theft of a billfold . . from a shopping buggy at a local shopping center. 1979 Playground Daily News (Ft. Walton Beach FL) 8 Dec sec B 10/3, [Advt:] Every hour a lucky buggy will be selected. If you have the lucky buggy you will be able to get a big discount. 1994 DARE File, Growing up in Ohio, I always heard people use the term “cart” or “grocery cart.” . . I lived in Georgia—northeastern [sic] corner a stone’s throw from the Alabama border—for two years, and it was there that I first heard the expression “buggy” to refer to what I always called a grocery cart. 1998 Myers Eat Drink 86 sePA, I let her push the buggy (what we call shopping carts up this way) while I walked a few respectable, but wary paces ahead. 2000 Daily Star (Hammond LA) 12 Apr sec A 6/1, I started loading up my shopping buggy until I realized the deal wasn’t as great as it first appeared. 2000 DARE File, “Buggy” is widely distributed throughout the coalfields of southeast Kentucky and southwest VA. 2001 Ibid Chattanooga TN, Buggy—store shopping cart. Current and universal. 2007 Chron.–Telegram (Elyria OH) 5 Feb sec D 1/1, I went inside to get a cart but there already was a shopper at each row, tugging on the end buggy, trying to free it from the others it had firmly latched onto. 2012 in 2013 DARE File—Internet swPA, In Pittsburgh we say . . “buggy” meaning shopping cart. 2012 DARE File OK, Buggy—a grocery cart. 2014 Ibid ceAL, Our friends from the mid-west who moved here were surprised that we called shopping carts at the grocery store “buggies”.