Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to make a fuss.

1833		S. Smith Major Downing (1834) 62: These legislators have been carryin on so like all possest.
1838		T. Haliburton Clockmaker II 123: Here’s this poor gall in my room carryin’ on like ravin’ distracted mad.
1874		Derbyshire Courier 17 Jan. 2/5: A couple of old tom-cats got to rarin’ and chargin’ around [...] carryin’ on like sin.
1875		Auckland Eve. Star (Supp.) 30 Oct. 6/3: Let them [...] howl and carry on, for you don’t care a cent.
1884		(con. c.1840) ‘Mark Twain’ Huckleberry Finn 257: Well, we swarmed along down the river road, just carrying on like wildcats.
1894		H. Nevinson ‘The St. George of Rochester’ in Keating Working Class Stories of the 1890s (1971) 43: Mrs Moore came to the door, and seein’ us she started cryin’ and carryin’ on most terrible.
1900		G. Fitzmaurice ‘The Plight of Lena’s Wooers’ in Weekly Freeman 15 Dec. (1970) 40: One of her servant women was outside the door [...] but hearing her ‘carry on’ so wildly within, she prudently determined to stay where she was.
1913		A. Irvine My Lady of the Chimney Corner 127: Man alive, didn’t she carry on terrible!
1928		R. Hall Well of Loneliness (1976) 224: Now uncle be qui-et I do be-seech ’e! It’s so bad for ’e carryin’ on in this wise.
1938		D. Runyon ‘Social Error’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 455: Well, I have never see a doll carry on like Miss Harriet Mackyle does when she finds out her Polly is a goner.
1944		D. Runyon Runyon à la Carte 54: Marie begins to weep and wail and to carry on as bims do when they are flustered.
1958		A. Sillitoe Sat. Night and Sun. Morning 60: He did not like the way she was carrying on about it.
1965		E. Bond Saved Scene viii: We ain’ carryin’ on like this! Yer got a stop upsettin’ me night after night.
1979		E. Torres After Hours 11: You’d think I was gettin’ away with murder the way he carried on.
1987		‘Joe Bob Briggs’ Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In 197: Sometimes she’ll start whining and carrying on and bothering all the other employees.
2001		A. Sillitoe Birthday 75: She couldn’t endure his carryings on at the way she carried on, and in any case he absolutely couldn’t stand the way she carried on.

2. to behave in an obstreperous or ostentatious manner.

1836		T. Haliburton Clockmaker I 157: A crowd of folks cried out, Down with the Yankee, let him have it [...] and they carried on pretty high I tell you.
1845		D. Corcoran Pickings from N.O. Picayune (1847) 62: I was on an almighty big bender last night [...] goody gracious, if mother knew I was carrying on so!
1851		N.Y. Herald 5 Apr. 2/3: While at Fort Hamilton, or some where in that neighborhood, they were ‘carrying on,’ as the phrase is, and [...] Krebbs struck Green a blow on the head, which knocked him down, and he died a few minutes after.
1864		E. Yates Broken to Harness I 126: He did carry on with you in the most shameful manner.
1872		Schele De Vere Americanisms 590: Carry on, to, to riot or frolic, is perhaps a phrase borrowed from a nautical term to carry on sail. The verb, as well as the noun made from it, carryings-on, carry on is found in old English authors.
1880		Manchester Courier 30 Sept. 6/5: Chorlton threatened to ‘put her light out for carrying on so’. He did not say what ‘carrying on’ meant, but witness thought he meant his wife getting drunk.
1884		(con. c.1840) ‘Mark Twain’ Huckleberry Finn (2001) 184: He’s always a carryin’ on like that, when he’s drunk.
1892		‘John Miller’ Workingman’s Paradise 22: ‘Is he still carrying on?’ enquired Nellie, [...] ‘Of course, drink, drink, drink, whenever he gets a chance, and that seems pretty well always.’.
1895		W. Pett Ridge Minor Dialogues 295: Oh, William, don’t carry on in that strine! You don’t want to make me worse, do you?
1906		Marvel 22 Dec. 642: I thought all along as ’ow the old beggar was going off his chump, the way he’s been carrying on.
1917		Wodehouse ‘ The Making of Mac’s’ in Man with Two Left Feet 135: The papers say that real human beings don’t carry on in that way.
1920		Ade Hand-made Fables 88: [He] was carrying on with the Footlight Favourite.
1938		J. Curtis They Drive by Night 59: Dancing around the café like a big cow, showing all the boys her cami-knicks and yelling out and carrying on at all the other girls to do the same.
1947		N. Cassady letter 5 Oct. in Charters I (1995) 134: Then, Jack, I’ll be happy again, and we’ll really carry on.
1953		S. Bellow Augie March (1996) 133: During the fights Renling didn’t holler or carry on, but he ate them up.
1963		K. Waterhouse Jubb (1966) 35: You ever see ’ow they carry on down there? Shuting and carrying on they was.
1972		Milner & Milner Black Players 134: As he sat forlornly on the curb a Black brother came up. ‘Now ain’t you a bitch — the way you were performing and carrying on.’.
1978		P. Theroux Picture Palace 105: I would have thought if she had a heart condition she wouldn’t carry on like that.
1982		P. Bailey An Eng. Madam 22: I had the feeling he was getting all sexed-up, the way he was carrying on.
2000		Guardian Rev. 15 Jan. 5: Bitch-slapping. That’s no way to carry on.
2012		W.D. Myers All the Right Stuff 172: ‘[A]ll they want to do is drink and gamble and carry on like they’re heathens or something’.

3. (orig. US, also carry out) to flirt.

1856		G.J. Whyte-Melville Kate Coventry (1865) 23: With lynx-eyes she notes how Lady Carmine’s eldest girl is ‘carrying on’ with young Thriftless.
1876		B. Harte Gabriel Conroy II 33: To think of the artfulness of that man [...] a-gettin’ up sympathy about his sufferin’s at Starvation Camp, and all the while a-carryin’ on with the widder of one o’ them onfortunets.
1889		B. Mitford Fire Trumpet I 77: Yet there was Ethel carrying on furiously with this fellow, while he, Jeffreys, was sent to the wall.
1892		Albert Chevalier ‘I’ve Got ’Er ’At’ 🎵 She thought as ’ow I wouldn’t mind ’Er carryin’ on a bit [...] She tipped a wink to Billy Brown, An’ whispered ‘See me take ’im down’.
1906		H. Lawson ‘Johnson’s Wonder’ in Roderick (1967–9) II 199: She carried out most scand’lously before her husband’s eyes.
1931		(con. 1918) E.W. Springs Rise and Fall of Carol Banks 250: The way she’s carrying on with Jerry is a disgrace [...] Jerry is nobody for a girl to play with.
1975		T. Rhone School’s Out II iii: Carrying on with a schoolgirl is one thing, but...

4. to have an adulterous or additional (if unmarried) relationship; usu. as carry on with.

1876		Besant & Rice Golden Butterfly III 88: She and I carried on for a whole season. People talked. Then she got engaged to her present husband.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 14 Mar. 22/2: In Act 1, the Princess discovers that her husband is carrying on with her most intimate friend, Sylvanie – the Princess forgiving her husband because she is passionately fond of him.
1890		Sporting Times 12 Apr. 2/2: I loved her madly but she was a flirt. She used to ‘carry on’ with a snobby little beast called Cobb.
1891		G.R. Sims ‘How to Write a Novel’ Dagonet Ditties 122: It seems she suspected his sweetheart and John, / In the words of ‘Mad Hugh,’ ‘were a-carrying on’.
1900–01		H. Lawson ‘The House that was Never Built’ in Roderick (1972) 430: She met a chap she’d been carrying on with before she married Brassington.
1911		A. Bennett Card (1974) 250: It was felt that either Denry [...] had been married before, unknown to his Nellie, and had been ‘carrying on’ at Geneva.
1921		D.L. Sayers Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1977) 92: Just as if I was carrying on with another woman or something.
1938		G. Kersh Night and the City 263: Harry’s been carrying on with some tart from Phil Nosseross’ club.
1943		Mass-Observation Report on Juvenile Drinking 11: They get the Army allowance, and they carry on, and have a good time with the fellows they get to know.
1958		A. Sillitoe Sat. Night and Sun. Morning 29: Who would believe anyway that I was carrying on with his missis?
1963		N. Dunn Up the Junction 33: Four months she was carrying on with her best mate’s old man.
1978		A. Maupin Tales of the City (1984) 91: Don’t you think your father would have noticed, if she was . . . carrying on with . . .
1984		‘Derek Raymond’ He Died with His Eyes Open 77: I knew she was carryin on with other fellers.
2003		Guardian G2 30 May 7: The family turfed him out for carrying on with ‘that bloody English woman’.