[Etymology unknown: the word has been conjecturally connected with BOGIE; also with BUG (see esp. quot. 1773). There is no ground for supposing it to be of Anglo-Indian origin.]
1. A light one-horse (sometimes two-horse) vehicle, for one or two persons. Those in use in America have four wheels; those in England and India, two; in India there is a hood. (In recent use, esp. in U.S., India, and the colonies.)
1773. Gentl. Mag., XLIII. 297. Driving a post coach and four against a single horse chaise, throwing out the driver of it, and breaking the chaise to pieces … ludicrously denominating mischief of this kind, ‘Running down the Buggies.’
1778. Ann. Reg., 197. The Suicide, Prol.
| With two-act pieces what machines agree? | |
| Buggies, tim-whiskies, or squeez’d vis-a-vis. |
1782. India Gaz., 14 Sept. (Y.). An excellent Buggy Horse about 15 Hands high.
1794. W. Felton, Carriages (1801), II. 183. The Buggy is a small chaise, made to carry one person only.
1825. Annals Sporting, vii. 59. The speed and pluck of their buggy horses.
1844. Disraeli, Coningsby, II. xiv. 187 (L.). Villebecque prevailed upon Flora to drive with him to the race in a buggy he borrowed of the steward.
1859. Lang, Wand. India, 287. We drove as far as Deobund in the buggy.
1862. B. Taylor, Home & Abr., Ser. II. ii. 4. 93. I asked for a two-horse buggy and driver.
1866. Geo. Eliot, Felix Holt, III. 166. See that somebody takes her back … in the buggy.
2. In technical uses: see quots. (Cf. BOGIE.)
1861. Raymond, Mining Gloss., Buggy, a small mine-wagon holding 1/2 ton to 1 ton of coal.
1883. W. C. Conant, in Harper’s Mag., 939/2. The men who do this work go out for the purpose on the strand in a ‘buggy,’ so called, which is a board seat slung by ropes from the axis of a grooved wheel fitting and travelling on the strand as bound together.
3. Comb., as buggy-boat, a boat made so that wheels can be fastened to it, so as to make it into a land-vehicle; buggy-cultivator, buggy-plough, a plow having a seat for the plowman to ride on.
