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 study, published in the Journal of Business Research, looked at how digital shopping carts were associated with spending and shopping behavior. — Kurt Knutsson, FOXNews.com, 8 Sep. 2026

Additional wire was located in a shopping cart near an unsecured mall entrance. — Vince Basada, Sacbee.com, 5 Sep. 2026

Just over four months later, Google introduced Universal Cart, an intelligent shopping cart that allows consumers to add products from different retailers and purchase them through a single checkout. — Paulina Likos, CNBC, 4 Sep. 2026

End-of-summer sales are already cropping up all over the internet, and there are plenty of deals worth adding to my digital shopping cart this year, from Clark’s popular walking sneakers to the newest Apple AirPods Pro 3. — Mariana Best, PEOPLE, 4 Sep. 2026

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