carrying-on
"carrying-on" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“carrying-on” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 11
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Improper, immoral behavior.
Corpus desk
Index EN-carrying-on · carrying-on · English
carrying-on · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 11 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "C" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | carrying-on |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “carrying-on” in English
Rare enough to double-check
carrying-on is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for carrying-on, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is carrying-on, spelled C-A-R-R-Y-I-N-G---O-N.
Definition
- 1Improper, immoral behavior.
- 2Irritating or self-indulgent behavior.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how carrying-on appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
-- One thing I know for sure - a person can't sneeze in this town without somebody offerin' him a handkerchief -- What you mean? -- Nothing. It's an awful small town for any kinda carryin' on...And some people got a lotta guns."
In fact, he walked out of Cambridge but would probably have been sent down had he continued his rowdy carrying on with such disreputable young men as Malcolm Lowry.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.