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

Some customers’ shopping carts will look a little different this holiday season with the absence of one treat with a cult-following. —Sabrina Weiss, PEOPLE, 22 Dec. 2025

These eight puppies were found abandoned in a bag inside a shopping cart outside the Target on Mifflin Street in South Philly, according to ACCT Philly and Outcast Rescue. —Joe Brandt, CBS News, 20 Dec. 2025

That show was sort of anticlimactic in that contestants would just fill their shopping carts with frozen turkeys and diapers. —Tony Maglio, HollywoodReporter, 17 Dec. 2025

Volunteer shoppers simultaneously added 20 grocery items from a specific grocery store to their Instacart shopping carts and researchers analyzed the prices. —Betty Lin-Fisher, USA Today, 10 Dec. 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