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

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

Ahead, see her picks and add a few (or all) of them to your shopping carts! —Hedy Phillips, PEOPLE, 8 Dec. 2025

Kasper was reportedly grabbing a shopping cart when Melgar-Ayala exited his own vehicle and began firing a handgun, striking him multiple times. —Bonny Chu, FOXNews.com, 8 Dec. 2025

And shopping carts were smaller on Black Friday, as units per transaction dropped by 2%. —Matt Egan, CNN Money, 1 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