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beach buggy

beach buggy

3.8
A small open vehicle with large tires for driving on sand
  • noun
  • /biːtʃ ˈbʌɡi/
translation icon : buggy de playa
  • We rented a beach buggy to explore the sandy shores and enjoy the ocean breeze.

Examples

  • He took his beach buggy for a joyride along the coastline during the summer vacation.

  • I walked my kids to daycare and walked to the grocery store 2 miles away with, ironically, my beach buggy to get some more food.

    Blog text (17)
  • In the turn lane, other drivers got their green arrow, and she reacted too fast, fueling the old Dodge into a beach buggy filled with boys.

    Fiction book (1995)
  • The children laughed as they bounced around in the beach buggy while cruising over the dunes.

Synonyms

dune buggy
vsbeach buggy
7 4.4

A small open car with large tires for driving on sand

is a small recreational vehicle for beaches or dunes rather than stressing openness

How Big

SUV
100 2.7
beach buggy
3.8
go-kart
14 3.3

Surface Forms

beach buggy singular
beach buggies plural

Morphology

beach + buggy

The compound is compositional: 'beach' specifies the location/purpose and 'buggy' denotes a small vehicle, so a learner who knows both words can infer a vehicle used on beaches. The noun+noun modification pattern is common cross-linguistically and the meaning is predictable from the constituents (though 'buggy' has a baby-carriage sense, context makes the off-road vehicle sense clear).

Etymology

The name beach buggy comes from a simple picture: a light buggy used on the beach. One popular story says people made small, open cars with big tires to drive on sand, so the name came to mean 'a small recreational vehicle for beaches'.