carboy
UK/ˈkɑː.bɔɪ//ˈkɑɹ.boɪ/
carboy noun: a large, rigid bottle, originally made of glass and mainly used for fermentation, and now commonly made of plastic and used to store liquids.
Noun
carboy (plural carboys)
- A large, rigid bottle, originally made of glass and mainly used for fermentation, and now commonly made of plastic and used to store liquids.
- A few of them then boarded her and were busily engaged in what appeared, from my distant position, as the emptying of the contents of various carboys upon the dead bodies of the sailors and over the decks and works of the vessel.1912 February–July, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Under the Moons of Mars”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as “A Fair Captive from the Sky”, in A Princess of Mars...
- He ran to his right and another shot came at his legs. It hit the floor and zoomed into a huge carboy of clams that split in half and emptied a hundred shell-fish over the floor.1954, Ian Fleming, “Midnight Among The Worms”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 160
- Synonyms:
- demijohn
Verb
carboy (third-person singular simple present carboys, present participle carboying, simple past and past participle carboyed)
- To bottle in a carboy.
- Juice bottled or carboyed at this high temperature is difficult to cool rapidly because of the danger of breakage of glass.1936, New York (State) Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin (issues 658-679, page 14)
Synonyms of carboy
Forms of carboy
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | carboys |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | carboys |
| present participle | carboying |
| past participle | carboyed |
| past | carboyed |
Origin of carboy
From Persian قرابه (qarrâbeh, qarrâbah). Doublet of carafe.
Questions about carboy
- What does carboy mean?
- Carboy means a large, rigid bottle, originally made of glass and mainly used for fermentation, and now commonly made of plastic and used to store liquids.
- What part of speech is carboy?
- Carboy can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce carboy?
- Carboy is pronounced /ˈkɑː.bɔɪ/ (UK).
- What is the plural of carboy?
- The plural of carboy is carboys.
Words near carboy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: carboy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-carboy.wav.
Cite this entry: “carboy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/carboy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.