1. The action of the vb. CARRY in various senses.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 62. Caryynge.
1521. in Bury Wills (1850), 123. Item for carieng of tymber.
1626. Capt. Smith, Accid. Yng. Sea-men, 13. The sheathing, furring, carrying, washing and breaming.
1707. Addison, Pres. State War (1708), 14 (J.). They will be of no effect unless we improve them towards the carrying of our main point.
1769. in Picton, L’pool Munic. Rec. (1886), II. 220. The slave carrying and limitation Bills.
c. 1865. Circ. Sc., 435/1. In subtraction the carrying can never amount to more than 1.
2. with advb.
1597. Hooker, Eccl. Pol., V. lxxv. § 3. The carrying him forth upon a bier.
1611. Bible, Matt. i. 17. Vntill the carrying away into Babylon.
1642. Howell, For. Trav. (Arb.), 43. There are many things … worth the carying away.
1711. Addison, Spect., No. 73, ¶ 5. The carrying on of Traffick, the Administration of Justice.
1729. in Picton, L’pool Munic. Rec. (1886), II. 87. Pull full stop to the carrying on the building.
3. An act of carrying; that which is carried. Carryings-on (pl.): questionable or outré proceedings, flirtations, frolics; cf. CARRY v. 52 e.
1663. Butler, Hud., I. II. 55/556. Is this the end To which these carr’ings-on did tend?
1821. Byron, Foscari, II. i. 305. Your midnight carryings off and drownings.
1841. Peter Cram, in Knickerbocker Mag., XVII. 38 (Bartlett). Wherever there were singin’-schools, there would be carryings-on.
c. 1865. Circ. Sc., I. 510/2. The carryings from the rejected decimals are to be taken account of.
4. attrib., as in carrying corporation, horse, power, vessel; carrying-place, a place where goods, etc., have to be carried overland in inland navigation (cf. CARRIAGE, CARRY sb.); carrying trade, the trade or business of carrying goods, esp. over sea between different countries.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 62. Caryynge vesselle, or instrument of caryynge.
1776. Adam Smith, W. N., I. II. v. 377. The coal trade … employs more shipping than all the carrying trade of England.
1786. W. Grayson, in Sparks, Corr. Amer. Rev. (1853), IV. 133. The navigable waters and the carrying-places between them are made common highways.
1876. Bancroft, Hist. U. S., V. liii. 124. The shortest carrying-place from the Kennebec to the Dead River.
1878. F. S. Williams, Midl. Railw., 157. A monopoly of the carrying trade of the district.
1878. Huxley, Physiogr., 133. If a river has a steep bed it generally possesses great carrying power.
1887. Manch. Guard., 2 April, 7/5. Business of a carrying corporation.
¶ Examples of the passage of the vbl. sb. into a gerund, and its subsequent apparent use as a passive pple., through omission of preceding preposition a, as in ‘the ark was a building.’
1684. J. Peter’s Siege of Vienna, 3–4. The Fortifications of that Town, which were vigorously carrying on by Count Staremberg.
1736. Butler, Anal., II. iv. 186. A mysterious Oeconomy, which has been carrying on from the Time the World came into it present wretched State.
1742. Jarvis, Quix., I. III. viii. (heading) Several unfortunate persons, who were carrying, much against their wills, to a place they did not like.
1777. Sheridan, Trip Scarb., II. i. I met a wounded peer carrying off.
1816. Jane Austen, Emma, II. xviii. 266. Tea was carrying round.
1849. Grote, Greece (1862), V. lxi. 338. The operations now carrying on in Chios.
