Shopping is the buying of goods, or the goods bought. Do the shopping, carry the shopping, go shopping.
The two senses sit side by side in one sentence: you go shopping and come home with the shopping. Window shopping is looking without buying, and it has been a named pastime since shop windows became worth looking at.
1nounshoppingThe buying of goods, or the goods bought.
“Can you help me carry the shopping in from the car?”
shopping is an activity.
Also accepted in games: purchase
Middle English
schoppe
English
shop
English, today
shopping
Built from
by surface analysis, shop + -ing. shop comes from Middle English schoppe. From Middle English shoppe, schoppe, from Old English sċoppa (“shed; booth; stall; shop”), from Proto-Germanic skupp-, skup- (“barn, shed”), from Proto-Indo-European skub-, skup- (“to bend, bow, curve, vault”). Cognate with Dutch schop (“shed”), German Schuppen (“shed”), German Schober (“barn”), French échoppe (“booth, shop”) (< Germanic). The verb is denominal. The noun senses “act of shopping”, “purchased items” are backformed from the verb.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA