carry out

English

Pronunciation

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Verb

carry out (third-person singular simple present carries out, present participle carrying out, simple past and past participle carried out)

1. (transitive) To hold while moving it out.

   We’ll have to carry the piano out of the shop.

   • 1921 June, Margery Williams, “The Velveteen Rabbit: Or How Toys Become Real”, in Harper’s Bazar, volume LVI, number 6 (2504 overall), New York, N.Y.: International Magazine Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:

     And so the little Rabbit was put into a sack with the old picture-books and a lot of rubbish, and carried out to the end of the garden behind the fowl-house.

2. (transitive, idiomatic) To fulfill.

   She finally carried out her lifelong ambition when she appeared in a Hollywood blockbuster.

   • 1921 June, Margery Williams, “The Velveteen Rabbit: Or How Toys Become Real”, in Harper’s Bazar, volume LVI, number 6 (2504 overall), New York, N.Y.: International Magazine Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:

     The Boy was going to the seaside to-morrow. Everything was arranged, and now it only remained to carry out the doctor's orders.

   • 2011, Phil McNulty, Euro 2012: Montenegro 2-2 England‎:

     Capello warned his players that caution was not an option as they went in search of the result that would take England to Euro 2012. And his message was carried out to the letter in the opening exchanges as England played with a tempo and threat Montenegro struggled to subdue.

3. (transitive) To execute or perform; to put into operation; to do.

   For the entire last summer they were carrying out their plan to renovate the living room.

   • 1959 March, “The 2,500 h.p. electric locomotives for the Kent Coast electrification”, in Trains Illustrated, pages 124–125:

     The body design has been carried out to the requirements of the B.T.C. Design Panel in association with the Design Research Unit and its lines are described as "intentionally unelaborate".

   • 2000, Bob Foster, Birdum or Bust!, Henley Beach, SA: Seaview Press, page 123:

     [B]ut easily two-thirds of the work we carried out in this exercise was the de-bogging of other vehicles around the original one.

Related terms

• carryout
• carry off
• carry through

Translations

Further reading

• “carry”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “carry out”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• curatory, outcarry