bag lady
Americannoun
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Slang: Offensive. an unsheltered or homeless woman who lives and sleeps on city streets or in public places, often keeping all her belongings with her in shopping bags.
noun
Etymology
Origin of bag lady
First recorded in 1960–65
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Anne Meara was the talk of the town in the role of a bag lady who spurned the self-congratulatory charity of guilty swells.
From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 8, 2025
Ms. Komar said: “That she was seen as some kind of bag lady, that her art gets overshadowed by those stories, makes us angry.”
From New York Times • Jan. 26, 2024
“I thought I would be a bag lady 10 years from now saying, ‘Hey, I invented those,’ ” Ms. Revson told The Post in 1995.
From Washington Post • Sep. 19, 2022
That’s when Vera appeared like magic, through a door in a funeral home, fully formed with her name, looking more like a bag lady than a detective.
From The Guardian • Jun. 27, 2020
She was disguised as a crazy old bag lady, smiling and singing an Ancient Greek lullaby as her leathery hands gripped Percy’s neck.
From "The Son of Neptune" by Rick Riordan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
