Carried

How to spell carried

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce carried

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does carried mean?

1. verbPast tense of carry: bore, transported, or held something while moving.

Carried in a sentence

• The porter carried both suitcases up the stairs.

• She carried the proposal through three rounds of meetings.

Where does carried come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past tense of the verb 'carry', which came into English in the 1300s from Anglo-Norman French 'carier', meaning 'to transport in a vehicle'. That French verb was built on 'car', a wheeled cart, which traces back to the Latin 'carrum' or 'carrus', a Celtic-derived word for a two-wheeled wagon. The original sense was strictly about moving goods by cart, and only later did the meaning broaden to bearing or holding anything at all. The spelling 'carried' follows the regular English rule that a final 'y' after a consonant turns into 'i' before the ending '-ed', which is exactly where writers stumble and produce 'carryed'. The same wagon root still rolls through the modern words 'carriage', 'car', and 'cargo'.

How the word is built

• carry (to bear/transport)
• -ied (past tense, with y changed to i before -ed)