shopping cart

noun

1

: a metal or plastic cart with four small wheels that is used for holding merchandise when shopping (as at a supermarket or department store)

… about the only amenities besides the jumbo-sized shopping carts are a few flatbed dollies to allow shoppers to get large appliances like refrigerators and washing machines to the cash register and then out to the parking lot.

—Jean Crichton

2

: a temporary record of items selected for eventual purchase from an online vendor's website

To set up shop on the Internet, you need a commerce-enabled Web site, which includes the electronic shopping cart; a connection to the credit card network; and finally, a merchant account …

—Tom Negrino

Delivery charges are the No. 1 reason shoppers abandon a virtual shopping cart, according to Jupiter Media Metrix. Every Internet shopper has a shipping-charge horror story.

—Ellen Neuborn

Examples of shopping cart in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The man appeared to fall to the ground but later started waving the gun above the shopping cart and did not follow instructions to drop the gun, Clark said. —Katie Langford, Denver Post, 5 Sep. 2025

Ars Technica writers have encountered errors getting store pages to load, adding the game to an online shopping cart, and checking out once the game is part of the cart. —Kyle Orland, ArsTechnica, 4 Sep. 2025

Sizes and colors are already selling out, so now’s the time to snag the popular quilt to your virtual shopping cart (and enjoy fast and free shipping courtesy of Wayfair). —Mariana Best, Better Homes & Gardens, 4 Sep. 2025

Employees push shopping carts outside a Costco Wholesale warehouse store in Hawthorne, California, on August 27, 2025. —Chloe Mayer, MSNBC Newsweek, 1 Sep. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1934, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for shopping cart

• counterpart
• apart
• depart
• flowchart
• forepart
• impart
• pushcart
• rampart
• redstart
• restart
• subpart
• sweetheart