Cartnaping (pronounced kahrt-nap-ing)
(1) In
retail industry slang, the act of customers taking a shopping cart (in some
markets a “shopping trolley, buggy, trundler etc”) beyond the designated
confines (usually either the store or its car-park).
(2) In
slang, the act of a "cartnaper", a customer (now presumed to be a “Karen”) who purloins another’s (empty but unattended)
shopping cart for their own use, typically when no others conveniently are to
hand; it's one of the evils of modern urban life.
1990s: The word was first recorded in California, on the model of “kidnaping”, the construct being
cart + nap + -ing. In much non-US use,
the spelling usually would be “cartnapping”.
Historically, a cart was a small, open, wheeled vehicle, drawn or pushed
by a person or animal and used usually for transporting goods (although many passenger
transports (often towed) have been described thus. Go-carts (also as go-kart), the small motor
vehicles, powered by lawn-mower or motorcycle engines remain one of the most
popular platforms in entry-level motorsports although the sport now prefers they
be called “karts”. Cart was from the Middle
English cart & kart, from the Old Norse kartr (wagon; cart), akin to the Old
English cræt (chariot; cart), from the
Proto-Germanic krattaz, krattijô & kradō, from the primitive Indo-European gret- (tracery; wattle; cradle; cage; basket), from ger- (to turn, wind). It was cognate with the West Frisian kret (wheelbarrow for hauling dung), the
Dutch krat & kret (crate; wheelbarrow for hauling dung), the German Krätze (basket; pannier); the most
obvious wider cognate the Sanskrit ग्रन्थ
(grantha) (a binding).
In English the familiar meaning of “nap” is “to sleep for a brief time, especially during the day”. In that sense, nap was from the Middle English nappen, from the Old English hnappian (to doze, slumber, sleep), from the Proto-West Germanic hnappōn (to nap) and was cognate with the Old High German hnaffezan & hnaffezzan (from which Middle High German gained nafzen (to slumber), source of the German dialectal napfezen & nafzen (to nod, slumber, nap). In this sense, “nap” is used figuratively, often in the phrase “caught napping” that suggests being “caught off guard” (in military conflicts, sporting competitions etc). However, one of the other meanings of “nap” was “to grad; to nab”) and while the use is long extinct as a stand-alone word, as an element it endures in “kidnap” (and the derived “cartnap”, “catnap” etc). In that sense the source of “nap” is murky but it was probably of North Germanic origin, from the Old Swedish nappa (to pluck, pinch). The suffix –ing was from the Middle English -ing, from the Old English –ing & -ung (in the sense of the modern -ing, as a suffix forming nouns from verbs), from the Proto-West Germanic –ingu & -ungu, from the Proto-Germanic –ingō & -ungō. It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian -enge, the West Frisian –ing, the Dutch –ing, The Low German –ing & -ink, the German –ung, the Swedish -ing and the Icelandic –ing; All the cognate forms were used for the same purpose as the English -ing). Cartnaping & cartnap are nouns & verbs, cartnaper is a noun and cartnaped is a verb; the noun plural is cartnapings and, although also rare, cartnapers is more widely used, usually on internet “shaming” sites documenting the devices abandoned or dumped in streets, waterways, parks etc.
How it all began: US Patent 2,196,914, April 1940.
Although it’s
clear such things had in many cultures for millennia been used in some form, as a
mass-produced commodity, the modern shopping cart was “invented” by Sylvan
Goldman (1898-1984), an Oklahoma-based supermarket mogul. It was in 1936 (during the Great Depression) that Mr Goldman built his first prototypes and the following year, he began a
trial of the devices in his chain of Humpty Dumpty grocery stores. Although the early take-up rate was “sluggish”,
by 1938, when he filed a patent application for his original design (“a combination
basket and carriage”) the convenience afforded by the things had made them popular with customers and, in April
1940, the USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office) granted US Patent 2,196,914 (Folding
Basket Carriage for Self-Service Stores).
The utility was so obvious that nation-wide, shopping carts rapidly became features of large shopping centres Mt Goldman soon added features, most famously the “baby seat” although the early implementations of that would shock & appal today’s H&S (health & safety) regulators (although later, others would produce designs rather worse. In the post-war years, shopping carts multiplied by the million because of a then unique combination of circumstances in the US economy: (1) widespread & rising prosperity, (2) a shift of populations from town centres to (often newly developed) remote suburbs, (3) clusters of those suburbs being serviced by large shopping centres & supermarkets and (4) multi-vehicle households, a product of women having to drive somewhere to buy groceries, "corner stores" not as frequent a feature in sprawling suburbia. What the shopping centres tended to do was provide a space in which all of a week’s shopping could be done in one place, purchases collected by customers who parked their cars in vast car parks; it was the shopping cart that made this model of commerce structurally possible.
1964 GM Runabout show car with obligatory white, happily married, middle-class woman with one of her 2.8 children (who were always well-behaved). Note the child's white gloves, a wise parental precaution (even pre-COVID-19) given the volume of pathogens found on the typical supermarket shopping cart. The idea of a shoe-shaped three wheeler had been seen more than a decade earlier but things for that one, with novel four-abreast seating, ended badly.
One refinement to the concept of women "driving to the store" was the GM (General Motors) Runabout, displayed as part of the GM Futurama Exhibit at the 1964 New York World's Fair. The three-wheeled car was able to seat two adults and three children (approximately the size projected for the “average” white, middle-class US family by the late 1960s) and was optimized for ease of handling, the single front wheel able (at low speeds) to turn through 180o. The target market was apparent in its most innovative feature: two fitted shopping carts that slotted into the rear bodywork, wheels and lower assembly folding away when locked into position. That might seem superfluous given supermarkets provided such things but the advantage was the carts could also be used at home, obviating the need to make several trips between car and kitchen while carrying heavy bags. The retail industry presumably would have liked to have seen the idea catch on because, having already off-loaded onto the customer the task of carrying their groceries to the car, it would have meant they could do away with most of their own stock of carts, freeing up the space for stock displays, needing only a few for those who had to take their goods as far as a taxi. The poor, able to afford neither cab nor car, would just have to work it out, hopefully not by becoming cartnappers.
Mitt Romney (b 1947; Republican nominee in the 2012 US presidential election, US senator (Republican-Utah) 2019-2025), buying 12-packs of caffeine-free Diet Coke and Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi, Hunter's Shop and Save, Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, August 2012 (left) and Lindsay Lohan, shopping, Beverley Hills, Los Angeles, December 2007 (right). Neither Mitt nor Lindsay have ever been accused of cartnaping.
Ms Lohan probably used a shopping cart because a half-dozen 500 ml (16.9 fl oz) bottles of Evian water are heavier than they look athough not as heavy as "heavy water" (in inorganic chemistry, water containing deuterium instead of normal hydrogen (protium) and used as a moderator in nuclear reactors; that water weighs about 11% more than pure water, the difference due to the unique structure the hydrogen atoms that increases both molecular mass and physical density). Mormons are not allowed to do anything “evil” (though it's rumored some do and scandalously, there are Mormons with OnlyFans pages). The D&C (Doctrine and Covenants (1835 and referred to usually as the Word of Wisdom) is the scriptural canon of the Church of the Latter Day Saints (the Mormons), section 89 of which provides dietary guidelines that prohibit, inter alia, the consumption of alcohol, tobacco, and hot drinks (ie tea & coffee). This index of forbidden food accounts not only for why noted leading Mormon Mitt Romney usually looks so miserable but also why manufacturers of chocolate, candy & soda have long found Utah a receptive and lucrative market; other than joyful singing, the sugary treats are among their few (officially permitted) orally enjoyed pleasures. Despite all that and being restricted to caffeine-free soda, Mitt still knows how to have a good time.
Dumped in the wild: victims of cartnaping.
Carts built into cars never reached the market so the shopping cart remained ubiquitous, thus the emergence of the crime of “cartnaping”, a less wealthy demographic (such as university students stocking-up on beer & frozen pizzas) sneaking from the store, using their cart to carry the stash all the way home. So the students got their essentials but now had the problem of disposing of an unwanted cart, waiting for darkness to fall before dumping the thing in a local park, waterway or underpass a popular solution. Because there were so many drunkard, cartnaping students, it became a real problem (1) for the environment and (2) for the stores that by 2026 were paying typically US$75-150 for each sturdy cart ("high-tech" units with features including built-in scales, touchscreens and automatic payment sensors often ten times that or more). One early response was to pay third-party contractors ("cart-hunters") a fee “per cart recovered” but more recent measures include electronic devices making it difficult to push the things beyond a certain point (by "locking" the wheels) and a deposit scheme in which a low-denomination coin is inserted to gain use, the money refunded upon cart being returned. The latest approach is to require a swipe with a credit card or phone, not to extract a payment but to register the name of the user and local authorities have a variety of schemes to address the problem including a "report-a-cart hotline" and regimes under which stores are fined for each of their carts found "in the wild".
Strangely, despite Australia having been founded as a convict settlement (something that in time became a matter of national pride and in some suburbs an inter-generational inheritance), when it came to the design of the shopping trolley (local term for the shopping cart), it was done in a way making cartnaping easier. The difference between the US original and the Australian adaptation recently was explained by expatriate US TikToker Lex in Wonderland who noted the critical difference occurred to her when she realized the reason she was struck with dread when: “…having to make a turn at the supermarkets; I suck at it and of course the story in my head is everyone’s watching me and they know I am a foreigner.” This feeling was induced by Australian trolleys having all four wheels able to rotate through 360o while on US carts the rear units are directionally fixed. The observant TikToker explained the counterintuitive: “You’d think this would make it harder to manoeuvre but it’s quite the opposite!”, adding “What’s funny is the majority of Aussies agree that the trolleys here are difficult to manoeuvre. I was shocked at just how many agreed with me. We all share the same struggle.”
Lex is of course correct. Although there are many powered vehicles with some form of 4WS (four-wheel steering), most are low-speed devices (military utility vehicles, specialized rock climbing machines etc) and the road cars thus far equipped have only a limited range of rear-wheel steering (in different directions depending on the speed). For a high-speed cart-user like Lex, all having 360o rotational functionality at all four corners does is induce instability; Australians have just become accustomed to this and honed their techniques accordingly. However, the Australian shopping experience turned out to be not all bad, Lex noting the supermarkets were smaller than those in her home town of Houston, Texas, the advantage of the “smaller shop vibe” being “not as burdened with decision fatigue”, a less extreme version of what shopping was like behind the Iron Curtain where it was either "black shoes or brown shoes but brown are out of stock". Her experience would not wholly be shared by all US residents because "everything is bigger in Texas" but for at least those from big cities the difference in scale often would be obvious. So there are advantages and disadvantages between hemispheres but what Lex left unexplored was the way cartnaping is easier down under, the US carts ideal for smooth, flat surfaces (stores & car parks) but not as suited to negotiating the less predictable topography beyond where the 4WS of an Australian trolley aids controllability. In a nation founded by convicts, extending this courtesy to cartnapers might have been unwise.
US actor Jennifer Coolidge (b 1961) “cartnaping”, Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia, July 2026. The stunt was being filmed for an advertising campaign.
The cartnaping theme was picked up Amazon subsidiary Audible (a digital bookstore and streaming app) for their publicity campaign tempting shoppers with the “new experience” of listening to audio books while shopping. Audible’s campaign pitch was: “Shopping doesn't have to be boring. Select an audiobook and learn something new while you shop.” and that tied in with the advertisement’s concept: “Shopper becomes so immersed in her audio book experience she loses track of time and place, becoming so distracted she ends up pushing cart around the streets of Bondi Beach, totally forgetting her purpose was to take groceries home.”
Some directional instability experienced; Lex would empathize.
Presumably, being in control of a shopping cart while distracted by an engrossing audio book is something like driving a car while texting on a cell phone but, slower speeds being involved, the consequences of impacts will be less severe although one can imagine even low-speed “crashes” at places like Walmart might lead to “situation dramas”. Footage from Bondi Beach did suggest there was something in Lex’s point about the dubious benefits of the antipodean cart tradition of 4WS but Ms Coolidge confirmed the “directional instability scenes” were “in the script”.
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