English
Noun
excess baggage (uncountable)
- (literally travel) Luggage which exceeds the allowable size or weight (as for an airline flight or train trip), and for which an extra fee must therefore be paid.
- 2003 August 29, Roger Collis, "Frequent Traveler: Send blues packing," New York Times (retrieved 20 June 2013):
- Watch your weight: Excess baggage is damaging to the wallet. Airlines charge typically from $20 to $30 a kilogram.
- (idiomatic) Something or someone not needed or not wanted; something or someone of little use or importance; something or someone considered burdensome.
- 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses, Episode 14:
- "Come on, you dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed four flushers, false alarms and excess baggage!"
- 1976 Dec. 6, Paul Gray, "Books: Book of Changes" (review of The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston), Time:
- Exiles and refugees . . . are likely to find the old ways and old language excess baggage, especially if their adopted homeland is the U.S., where the race is to the swift and the adaptable.
- (idiomatic) A dubious or unhelpful mental outlook, emotional disposition, or personal history.
- c. 1905, O. Henry, "The Handbook of Hymen":
- A chin-whiskered man in Walla-Walla, carrying a line of hope as excess baggage, had grubstaked us.
- 1996 April 8, Murray Chass, "On Baseball: An Early Lesson on Expectation vs. Reality," New York Times (retrieved 20 June 2013):
- The Pirates entered the season lugging no one's expectations as excess baggage.
- 2004 March 24, J. F. Kelly Jr., "Living with his anti-war past," San Diego Source (retrieved 20 June 2013):
- Every candidate for public office probably has some excess baggage to carry around that he'd rather not have. With Sen. John Kerry, it's undoubtedly his anti-Vietnam War activism.
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