Other forms: carried, carrying, carries
To carry is to hold something and move it. Carry a bag, carry a child, carry the shopping in from the car. It is the everyday word for moving something with your own strength.
It stretches a long way from there. A road carries traffic, a shop carries a product, a rumour carries, a voice carries across a room. A disease is carried by an insect; a proposal is carried by a vote. Note the spelling of the forms — carries, carried, carrying — which follow the consonant-plus-y rule and are a reliable spelling test. And carry on, meaning continue, is among the most used phrasal verbs in British English.
1verbcarryTo hold something and take it somewhere.
“He carried both suitcases up three flights.”
2verbverbTo have something with you.
“She never carries cash.”
3verbshopOf a shop, to keep a product in stock.
“They do not carry that brand any more.”
4verbsoundOf a sound, to travel far enough to be heard.
“Her voice carries to the back of the hall.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
carry is a way of moving something.
Anglo-Norman carier came from Latin carrus, a four-wheeled wagon — a word the Romans borrowed from Gaulish. Carry, carriage, cargo, car and career all descend from that same wagon, which is a good deal of English for one piece of Celtic transport.
Proto-Indo-European
*ḱers-
Latin
carrus — four-wheeled baggage wagon
Anglo-Norman
carier
Middle English
carien
English, today
carry
From Middle English carien, from Anglo-Norman carier (modern French charrier); from a derivative of Latin carrus (“four-wheeled baggage wagon”), ultimately of cel-gau - origin. Compare also cairen, whence Modern cair, with which it was confused.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA