carrier
Pluralcarriers
- 1Someone or something that carries another person or thing.
The bike has a rear carrier sturdy enough for a week's groceries.
The expedition hired local carriers to haul supplies up the mountain.
Similarbearer
Note
The agent noun the other meanings grow from: Middle English cariere, formed from carien with -ere and partly borrowed from Anglo-Norman carier. It could name a thing as readily as a person (Francis Bacon called the air "a carrier of the sounds" in 1627) and today it names vehicles too, as in armored personnel carrier.
- 2A company that operates a mobile phone network.
The phone is unlocked, so it works with any carrier.
Major carriers are racing to expand 5G coverage in rural areas.
Similarprovider, operator, network
Note
Telecom's formal term for such a company is mobile network operator, the phrase regulators and industry writing prefer. In everyday talk it is a carrier, or a wireless carrier when the context needs spelling out: a phone locked to one carrier, plans compared across carriers, a customer switching carriers for better coverage.
- 3A person or company whose business is shipping freight.
The carrier is liable for any damage to the freight while it is in transit.
We compared rates from three trucking carriers before shipping the machinery.
Similarhauler, haulier, transporter
- 4A person or other organism that has a genetic trait, mutation, or infection that can cause disease but shows no symptoms.
Genetic testing revealed that he is a carrier of the cystic fibrosis mutation.
Because carriers show no symptoms, they can spread typhoid without knowing it.
Note
Genetics and infectious disease mean different things by it. In genetics a carrier usually has one copy of a recessive variant, harmless to them but passable to their children; in infection a carrier harbors a live pathogen and can spread it while staying well. Both take of: a carrier of the gene, a carrier of typhoid.
- 5Short for aircraft carrier.
The carrier and its escort ships sailed into the Mediterranean at dawn.
The Navy kept the aging carrier in service as a training ship for new pilots.
Note
The clipped name is enough once the setting is naval: Eugene Cernan, recalling a posting in The Last Man on the Moon (1999), calls the USS Saipan "a boxy old carrier" without needing to say aircraft. Out of that setting the bare word could as easily mean an airline or a freight company, so spell out aircraft carrier on first mention.
- 6An airline that is officially certified to operate flights.
The merger created the country's third-largest domestic carrier.
Passengers stranded by the cancellation were rebooked on a partner carrier.
Similarairline
Note
Industry news and business pages favor this word where travelers would say airline. It usually comes with a label sorting the airline by market: the New York Times in 2013 called Southwest "the nation's largest domestic carrier," and regional and low-cost carriers are named the same way.
- 7A pigeon used to carry messages.
Each carrier flew home to its loft with a tiny capsule strapped to one leg.
During the siege, carriers flew messages over the enemy lines every morning.
- 8Short for carrier bag.
At the till she asked if I wanted a carrier, and I said I'd brought my own.
The handles of the paper carrier tore before he'd even reached the bus stop.
Note
This is a British clipping: carrier bag is the ordinary British name for the thin polythene or paper bag that holds your shopping, and a cashier may simply ask whether you need a carrier. For readers outside Britain, write shopping bag instead, since the short form may not be recognized there.
- 9A liquid or gas that serves to hold or carry another substance.
Water-based inks use water rather than solvent as the carrier for the dye.
Nitrogen acts as an inert carrier, sweeping the vapor through the coating chamber.
Note
Painters know it as the oil the pigment rides in, and linseed oil is a common one. Industry uses it the same way, often as a modifier: an inert carrier gas, a carrier liquid. In each case the carrier makes up the bulk of the mixture while the substance it holds does the work.
- 10A signal, such as a radio, sound or light wave, that is modulated so that it can carry information.
An AM station encodes its audio by varying the strength of its carrier.
The modem dropped the connection as soon as it lost the carrier from the other end.
- 11Short for charge carrier: anything that carries electric charge as it moves through a material.
Doping the silicon with phosphorus adds free electrons, raising the number of carriers that can conduct current.
In this material each hole behaves as a positive carrier, drifting the opposite way to the electrons.
Note
Doped silicon has two kinds of carrier in unequal numbers: electrons, and holes, the gaps where electrons are missing, which move like positive charges. The kind the doping supplies in plenty is the majority carrier; the scarce kind is the minority carrier, and engineers describe semiconductor behavior in those terms.
- 12A catalyst or other substance that acts as an intermediary in a chemical reaction.
Iron filings are added as a carrier when benzene is brominated.
In chemical looping combustion, a metal oxide is the carrier that shuttles oxygen from the air to the fuel.
Note
Chemists usually say what is being carried: a halogen carrier such as iron bromide helps bromine attack the benzene ring, and an oxygen carrier takes oxygen from one substance and hands it to another. Either way it comes out of the reaction regenerated, not used up, which is why it sits so close to a catalyst.
- 13In a differential gear assembly, especially a vehicle's, the part that holds the gears and their bearings.
The mechanic unbolted the carrier from the axle housing to get at the ring and pinion gears.
A cracked carrier let the spider gears shift, and the rear end started to grind on every turn.
Note
Two nested parts share the name in a mechanic's mouth. The smaller is the case in which the spider gears turn; the larger is the whole assembly holding the ring and pinion gears with their bearings, and on some axles it unbolts from the housing in one piece.
- 14In science fiction, a starship designed to carry and launch starfighters.
The carrier hung back behind the fleet and launched wave after wave of starfighters.
Our scanners picked up two enemy carriers dropping out of hyperspace near the moon.
Similarmothership
Note
Space fleets in fiction are built on the naval model, and this is the aircraft carrier moved into space. Its striking power is the fighters it launches: in BioWare's Mass Effect (2007), carriers keep clear of battle and send their fighters in. Dan Simmons's The Fall of Hyperion (1990) ranks attack carriers alongside cruisers and destroyers, more navy names taken to the stars.
- 15In a planetary gear train, a movable piece that drives or carries other parts.
The three planet gears turn on pins fixed to the carrier, which rotates around the sun gear.
In this transmission the output shaft is splined to the carrier, so the shaft turns whenever the planets orbit.
Similarspider
Note
The planet gears ride on it, each spinning on its own pin, so it turns whenever they roll around the sun gear. Its other names, spider and arm, describe the shape: a hub with arms reaching out to the pins. Hold any one of sun, ring or carrier still, and the other two become input and output.
- 16A movable part of a magazine gun that brings each cartridge to the position from which it can be pushed into the barrel.
Working the lever raises the carrier, lifting the next cartridge in line with the chamber.
The gunsmith replaced a worn carrier that kept catching shells against the edge of the barrel.
Similarlifter
Note
Repeaters with a tube magazine need one: lever-action rifles and pump-action shotguns hold their cartridges end to end under the barrel, below the line of the chamber. Each stroke of the action tips the carrier up with a fresh round. Gunsmiths also call the part a lifter.
- 17A piece, also called a lathe dog, that passes the motion of a lathe's faceplate to the object being turned.
Clamp the carrier on the end of the shaft before mounting it between centers.
The bent tail of the carrier caught against the faceplate, and the bar began to spin.
Similardog
Note
Centers support a workpiece at each end but cannot turn it, and this clamp supplies the drive. It is clamped to the work, and a pin or slot on the faceplate catches its bent tail, so the work turns with the spindle.
- 18In a braiding machine, a holder for a spool or bobbin.
The braider's sixteen carriers wind around one another on curving tracks, interlacing their yarns over the cable.
Before each run, the operator loads a full bobbin onto every carrier.
Note
A braiding machine is sized by its carriers: a sixteen-carrier braider lays sixteen strands, because each carrier holds one yarn and pays it out as it travels its track around the others. It also keeps that yarn under steady tension, which is what makes the finished braid even.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English cariere, formed partly from carien + -ere on the model of Anglo-Norman carier, cariour, and partly taken directly from Anglo-Norman. In modern terms it can be analysed as carry + -er.