Word.ws English Dictionary

carry-on

/ˈkɛɹi ˌɑn/US/ˈkæɹi ˌɑn/

carry-on adjective: taken onto an airplane (or a ferry, etc.) with a passenger, rather than checked.

Adjective

carry-on (not comparable)

  1. Taken onto an airplane (or a ferry, etc.) with a passenger, rather than checked.
    • It's a compact suitcase, but it makes a good carry-on bag.
    Synonyms:
    hand, personal, cabin, flight
    Antonyms:
    checked

Noun

carry-on (countable and uncountable, plural carry-ons)

  1. That luggage or baggage which is taken onto an airplane (or a ferry, etc.) with a passenger, rather than checked.
    • Do you think they'll accept my ski poles as carry-on?
    1. A bag, suitcase, etc., used to carry this luggage or baggage.
      • "THAT'S NOT MY CARRY-ON, THOSE WOULD NEVER GET THROUGH SECURITY. ALSO YOU'RE GROUNDED"2022, Jeph Jacques, Questionable Content (webcomic), 4900 TeenSA
  2. (New Zealand, UK, countable) A palaver; a disorderly or absurd situation.
    • Sometimes all this carry-on about race, religion and sex seems so petty and silly that I cannot take it seriously.1978 December 9, Nancy Walker, “Sexism and Racism at GCN?”, in Gay Community News, volume 6, number 20, page 10
    • "I love salad",she dared when it came to the next course, and then inwardly cringed when it seemed that that was actually a special order and there was such a carry-on about what kind of salad she wanted.2002, Lynne Graham, The Italian's Wife

Synonyms of carry-on

1 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of carry-on

Forms of carry-on

Adjective
alternative formcarryon
Noun
pluralcarry-ons

Origin of carry-on

Deverbal from carry on.

Questions about carry-on

What does carry-on mean?
Carry-on means taken onto an airplane (or a ferry, etc.) with a passenger, rather than checked.
What part of speech is carry-on?
Carry-on can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce carry-on?
Carry-on is pronounced /ˈkæɹi ˌɑn/ (US).

Words near carry-on in the dictionary

  1. carry-go-bring-comes
  2. carry-in
  3. carry-ins
  4. carry-lookahead
  5. carry-lookaheads
  6. carry-on
  7. carry-ons
  8. carry-out
  9. carry-outs
  10. carryability
  11. carryable

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: carry-on (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.

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Cite this entry: “carry-on.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/carry-on. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.