Carry

How to spell carry

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce carry

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does carry mean?

1. verbTo hold or support something while moving it from one place to another.

Carry in a sentence

• The porter offered to carry the heavy suitcase upstairs.

• These trucks can carry several tonnes of gravel at a time.

Where does carry come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Carry came into English in the early 1300s from Anglo-Norman and Old North French carier, meaning 'to transport in a vehicle'. That verb was built on the Late Latin noun carrus, a 'wheeled wagon' or 'cart', a word the Romans themselves borrowed from Gaulish, the Celtic language of ancient Gaul. The original idea was strictly about hauling goods by cart, but the meaning broadened over the centuries to cover bearing anything from one place to another, by vehicle or simply in the hands. The same carrus root sits inside the everyday words 'car', 'carriage', 'cargo', and 'career', which all share the notion of something rolling or being conveyed. The doubled r and the final y, which shifts to i in forms like 'carried' and 'carries', are the small spelling points worth fixing in memory.

How the word is built

• carr- (from Latin carrus: wheeled vehicle, via Anglo-Norman carier)
• -y (verb suffix)