Word.ws English Dictionary

open-carry

open-carry verb: to visibly carry a firearm in a public space.

Verb

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

  1. (intransitive, transitive) To visibly carry a firearm in a public space.
    • The police said that his gun was "plainly visible", and they seemed to imply that he was open-carrying.2012 July 31, Mike_Fontenot, “Re: So Much For CC Permits”, in rec.guns (Usenet)
    • Everyone in the crowd conspicuously open carried a weapon, making sure to let everyone around them know that they were packing.2019 April 18, Thomas Harper, Incarnate: Essence, Thomas Harper, →ISBN, page 115

Forms of open-carry

third-person singular presentopen-carries
present participleopen-carrying
past participleopen-carried
pastopen-carried

Questions about open-carry

What does open-carry mean?
Open-carry means to visibly carry a firearm in a public space.
What part of speech is open-carry?
Open-carry is a verb.
What is the past tense of open-carry?
The past tense of open-carry is open-carried.

Words near open-carry in the dictionary

  1. open-book contract
  2. open-book contracts
  3. open-breasted
  4. open-carried
  5. open-carries
  6. open-carry
  7. open-carrying
  8. open-cast
  9. open-chain
  10. open-closed principle
  11. open-collar

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: open-carry (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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