Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a commotion, an exciting event, a disturbance, fuss, excitement; usu. in phr. what a carry-on! or a right/real carry-on.

1890		J. Service Notandums V 29: Byla [bailie] Stech, who had been cheated out of his dinner by a’ the carry on [OED].
1892		Aberdeen Eve. Exp. 13 Oct. 3/1: What sort of a carry-on was this at the picnic?
1915		Hull Dly Mail 24 May 2/5: Wait until the day comes [...] oh, what a ‘carry on’ it will be!
1927		Scots Observer 23 Apr. 2/3: Ladies of the Hannah More type lamented the ‘voluptuous’ carry-ons of miners .
1942		E. Cross Tailor and Ansty 49: Wisha! Listen to him! Full of jokes and the laughing and the carry-on.
1953		A. Buckeridge Jennings’ Diary 148: Now look here, I’ve had enough of this carry-on.
1961		(con. 1890–1910) ‘Flann O’Brien’ Hard Life (1962) 78: A man named Robert Catesby thinks to himself that we’ve had as much of this sort of carry-on as we’re going to take.
1961		T. Taylor Baron’s Court All Change (2011) 58: [N]o junkies, we couldn’t stand that carry on in our little jungle.
1984		P. Barker Blow Your House Down 1: You’d only have a carry-on and wake every bugger up.
1999		A. O’Hagan Our Fathers 219: So you know all the carry-on. The hearings in Glasgow?
2006		D. Mitchell Black Swan Green 303: That’s what this whole blue-arsed carry-on’s about.
2007		L. Redhead Cherry Pie [ebook] ‘Sir, we can’t have this sort of carry on’.
2015		N. Cummins Tales of the Honey Badger [ebook] More fearful of the carry-on from everyone that would ensue if I gave up ‘scared’.
[2023		R. Milward Man-Eating Typewriter 207: I’d spotted the odd screamline about this daffy Profumo carry-on].

2. activity, with no excesses implied.

1929		J.B. Priestley Good Companions 24: Same old carry-on every time. Places all alike when you come to know ’em.
1943		‘Myles na gCopaleen’ Faustus Kelly in ‘Flann O’Brien’ Stories & Plays (1973) 122: You’d get all you want of that carry-on in Russia.
1997		C. McPherson Weir 16: I don’t want him using here for that sort of carry on. A married man like him.
2001		K. Sampson Outlaws (ms.) 35: I know plenty enough lads that’s ploughed their money into bars, restaurants, clubs and all of that carry-on.
2015		L. McInerney Glorious Heresies 13: [I]t was appropriate carry-on for the block he was chipped from, but it didn’t make it any less of an arseache.
2021		L. McInerney Rules of Revelation 11: ‘I wonder sometimes if it isn’t half-cracked that carry-on [i.e. criminality] makes you’.