baggage

excess baggage

1. Literally, travel luggage that exceeds the dimensions of size or weight normally allowed on a plane or train, usually requiring a fee for it to be allowed onboard. My suitcase was only slightly over the weight limit, but the airline clerk still insisted on labeling my suitcase as excess baggage and slapping me with a fine.

2. Any person or thing that is unnecessary or unwanted and thus is or becomes burdensome. I know it's ungenerous, but Martin's younger brother has been nothing but excess baggage since we agreed to let him live with us.

3. A personal history, emotional disposition, or traumatic experience that is or becomes debilitating or burdensome in life. He carried the excess baggage of his abusive parents with him for years after leaving home. Her reclusiveness has become real excess baggage for her in recent months.

See also: baggage, excess

bag and baggage

With all of one's possessions. You need to be out of your dorm room, bag and baggage, by Monday morning.

See also: and, bag, baggage

bag and baggage

 and part and parcel

with one's luggage; with all one's possessions. Sally showed up at our door bag and baggage one Sunday morning. All right, if you won't pay the rent, out with you, bag and baggage! Get all your stuff—part and parcel—out of here!

See also: and, bag, baggage

bag and baggage

All of one's belongings, especially with reference to departing with them; completely, totally. For example, The day he quit his job, John walked out, bag and baggage. Originating in the 1400s, this phrase at first meant an army's property, and to march off bag and baggage meant that the departing army was not leaving anything behind for the enemy's use. By the late 1500s, it had been transferred to other belongings.

See also: and, bag, baggage

bag and baggage

with all your belongings.

See also: and, bag, baggage

ˌbag and ˈbaggage

with all your belongings: If you don’t pay the rent, you’ll be thrown out, bag and baggage.

See also: and, bag, baggage

bag and baggage

1. With all one's belongings.

2. To a complete degree; entirely.

See also: and, bag, baggage

bag and baggage

All one’s belongings, usually in the sense of departing with them. It originally was a military phrase that meant all of an army’s property and was so used in the fifteenth century. To march away with bag and baggage meant that the army was leaving but was surrendering nothing to the enemy. The alliterative nature of the term has appealed to many writers, including Shakespeare. In As You Like It Touchstone says, “Come, shepherd, let us make an honourable retreat; though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage,” meaning the purse and its contents (money). In time the connotation of honorable departure was dropped and the term simply described clearing out completely. “‘Bag and baggage,’ said she, ‘I’m glad you’re going,’” declared Samuel Richardson’s heroine in Pamela (1741). See also kit and caboodle.

See also: and, bag, baggage