"carry someone's water" meaning in English

See carry someone's water in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: en-au-carry someone's water.ogg [Australia] Forms: carries someone's water [present, singular, third-person], carrying someone's water [participle, present], carried someone's water [participle, past], carried someone's water [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|carry<> someone's water}} carry someone's water (third-person singular simple present carries someone's water, present participle carrying someone's water, simple past and past participle carried someone's water)
  1. (intransitive, idiomatic) To do someone's bidding; to serve someone's interests. Tags: idiomatic, intransitive Synonyms: serve
    Sense id: en-carry_someone's_water-en-verb-YUQUwJT3 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for carry someone's water meaning in English (2.3kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "carries someone's water",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "carrying someone's water",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "carried someone's water",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "carried someone's water",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "carry<> someone's water"
      },
      "expansion": "carry someone's water (third-person singular simple present carries someone's water, present participle carrying someone's water, simple past and past participle carried someone's water)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1996, James Carroll, The City Below, page 287",
          "text": "\"I hear things are good.\" / Moran shrugged. \"Depends on who you're talking to. Who would you be talking to, Squire?\" / \"Frank\" / \"I thought that might be it. You still carrying his water?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005, Martin Clark, Plain Heathen Mischief, page 394",
          "text": "I've discovered the Lord doesn't need lackeys, lieutenants, minions, representatives and envoys to carry His water and discharge His affairs.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006, James Bruno, Chasm, page 113",
          "text": "\"Nope. Just here to see a staffer about something.\" / \"Staffers. Yeah, well. They hold the Congressman's bag and carry his water sometimes all right.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To do someone's bidding; to serve someone's interests."
      ],
      "id": "en-carry_someone's_water-en-verb-YUQUwJT3",
      "links": [
        [
          "bidding",
          "bidding"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(intransitive, idiomatic) To do someone's bidding; to serve someone's interests."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "serve"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "intransitive"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-carry someone's water.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/2/2a/En-au-carry_someone%27s_water.ogg/En-au-carry_someone%27s_water.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/En-au-carry_someone%27s_water.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "carry someone's water"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "carries someone's water",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "carrying someone's water",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "carried someone's water",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "carried someone's water",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "carry<> someone's water"
      },
      "expansion": "carry someone's water (third-person singular simple present carries someone's water, present participle carrying someone's water, simple past and past participle carried someone's water)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English intransitive verbs",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1996, James Carroll, The City Below, page 287",
          "text": "\"I hear things are good.\" / Moran shrugged. \"Depends on who you're talking to. Who would you be talking to, Squire?\" / \"Frank\" / \"I thought that might be it. You still carrying his water?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005, Martin Clark, Plain Heathen Mischief, page 394",
          "text": "I've discovered the Lord doesn't need lackeys, lieutenants, minions, representatives and envoys to carry His water and discharge His affairs.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006, James Bruno, Chasm, page 113",
          "text": "\"Nope. Just here to see a staffer about something.\" / \"Staffers. Yeah, well. They hold the Congressman's bag and carry his water sometimes all right.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To do someone's bidding; to serve someone's interests."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "bidding",
          "bidding"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(intransitive, idiomatic) To do someone's bidding; to serve someone's interests."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "intransitive"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-carry someone's water.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/2/2a/En-au-carry_someone%27s_water.ogg/En-au-carry_someone%27s_water.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/En-au-carry_someone%27s_water.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "serve"
    }
  ],
  "word": "carry someone's water"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.