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

Nagata, 68, started adopting AI in his supermarket chain more than a decade ago, deploying high-tech shopping carts in 2015 and launching Japan’s first smart store equipped with AI cameras to monitor inventory in 2018. —Zinnia Lee, Forbes, 6 Mar. 2025

Just down the sidewalk was a cluster of shopping carts and a small tent. —Blake Nelson, San Diego Union-Tribune, 3 Mar. 2025

If comfy socks are your thing, add the brand’s Cashmere Ankle Socks to your shopping cart too. —Kristin Braswell, Travel + Leisure, 12 Feb. 2025

This season–and for the first time since its debut in 1969–the hero handbag is reinvented in a reversible icy blue and pretty pale pink–two of spring’s hautest hues to take note of now, and then add to your already overflowing Rabanne shopping cart later. —Laura Jackson, Vogue, 7 Mar. 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