Carrying

How to spell carrying

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce carrying

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does carrying mean?

1. verbHolding or transporting something while moving it from one place to another.

Carrying in a sentence

• She was carrying two heavy bags of groceries up the stairs.

• The courier was carrying a fragile parcel marked as urgent.

Where does carrying come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the present participle of the verb 'carry', which English took from the Anglo-Norman and Old North French 'carier', meaning to transport something in a vehicle. That French verb was built on 'carre' or 'car', a cart, which traces back to the Latin 'carrus', a four-wheeled wagon, a word the Romans themselves borrowed from the Gaulish (Celtic) speakers of what is now France. The earliest English uses, around the 1300s, still kept the literal idea of conveying goods by cart, before the meaning widened to lifting and bearing things by any means. The same 'carrus' root sits inside everyday words like 'car', 'carriage', and 'cargo', which is a useful reminder of the family. The spelling trap is the doubled r and the kept y of the base, since the participle is 'carrying', never 'carying' or 'carriing'.

How the word is built

• carry (to transport, from Latin carrus 'wheeled vehicle')
• -ing (present participle suffix); the base keeps its double r and its -y