Carrier

How to spell carrier

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce carrier

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does carrier mean?

1. nounA person, company, or thing that transports goods, passengers, or messages.
2. nounA person or organism that harbours and transmits a disease or genetic trait without necessarily showing symptoms.

Carrier in a sentence

• The parcel arrived a day late because the carrier misrouted it.

• A healthy carrier can pass the infection to others without feeling ill.

• The airline operates as a budget carrier on European routes.

• Genetic testing showed that she was a carrier of the faulty gene.

Where does carrier come from?

Language of origin: French

The word carrier comes from the verb carry, which English borrowed in the early 1300s from the Anglo-Norman and Old French carier, meaning 'to transport in a vehicle'. That French verb traces back to the Late Latin carricare, 'to load a wagon', built on the Latin carrus, a Celtic-derived word for a wheeled cart or wagon. The agent suffix -er was added in English to mean 'one who carries', and the word first described people or animals that bore goods before broadening to vehicles, companies, and even biological agents of disease. The same carrus root quietly survives in everyday relatives such as 'car', 'cargo', 'carriage', and 'chariot'. The spelling trap lies in the doubled r inherited from carry, plus the unstressed -ier ending that sounds like a simple schwa.

How the word is built

• carry (from Old French carier: to transport)
• -er (agent noun suffix: one who or that which does)