carry out

Formscarries out, carrying out, carried out

1. 1
   do a taskphrasal verbtransitive

   To perform or execute something such as a task, a plan, or a piece of work, putting it into operation.

   The research team will carry out a series of experiments on the new vaccine.

   Most of the renovation was carried out by volunteers over two summers.

   Similarrun

   Note

   Technical writing leans on this sense, often in the passive, which makes the work rather than the worker the subject: the rebuilding now being carried out, a body design carried out to a panel's requirements. Its objects are jobs with a shape and an end, such as a plan, an experiment or a survey, and do is the plain word it dresses up.

2. 2
   fulfillphrasal verbidiomatictransitive

   To fulfill something, such as an order, a wish, or an ambition, by doing what it calls for.

   The new mayor moved quickly to carry out her campaign promises.

   The executor carried out the terms of the will to the letter.

   Similardischarge

   Note

   What gets carried out in this sense is a demand or a hope rather than a job: the doctor's orders, a lifelong ambition, the terms of a will, a campaign promise. When the stress falls on exact obedience, to the letter tends to follow. A plan or an experiment belongs to the task-doing meaning; an order or an ambition belongs here.

3. 3
   hold and removephrasal verbtransitive

   To take something out of a place by holding it while moving.

   The unconscious man was carried out of the smoke-filled bar by firefighters.

   The movers will carry out the furniture on Friday morning.

   Similarremove

   Note

   Here out keeps its sense of direction, so a place can follow it: carry the piano out of the shop, carried out to the end of the garden. The object can sit on either side of the particle (carry out the chairs, carry the chairs out), but a pronoun always goes in between: carry it out, never carry out it. That rule holds for every sense of the verb.

4. 4
   takeaway foodnoun · carry-outdialectalScotland

   Alternative spelling of carryout.

   On Friday nights the family shared fried chicken from the carry-out on Main Street.

   He brought a carry-out home after his late shift and ate it in front of the TV.

   Note

   The hyphen marks the noun: carry out is the verb, carry-out the takeaway, and carryout the same word closed up. In Scotland it names both the food bought to be eaten elsewhere and the shop that sells it, much as takeaway does. The plural is carry-outs.

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