On Sunday evenings, when I don't feel like cooking, we often get carry out from our favorite Chinese restaurant. I wonder how many other people are in the habit of getting carry out on Sundays (there is always a line)...though maybe take away is more popular for some. I was just reading a book in which the characters had Chinese take away. This got me to thinking about the difference between the two terms. "Carry out" and "take away" mean basically the same thing - that food is being picked up from a restaurant for consumption at a different location. In my opinion "carry out" is a slightly more descriptive term because it tells how the food is being transported; it is being carried (as opposed to being rolled, pushed or thrown). At any rate, I decided to do a google search to see which term returned more results and here are the results:57,200,000 for carry out food
130,000,000 for take away food
So apparently my dialectical leanings are not the norm. Of course there is yet another term that is far more common than "carry out" and "take away" and it is "take out". A google search for take out food returned 212,000,000 results.
6 comments:
Around these here parts we call it "take out" and it is my favorite thing to have for dinner ;)
Interesting topic ...
Spending the bulk of my first three-plus decades in the Ohio/PA area, the only term I recall hearing was "take out."
During the years that I lived in Europe, I found that "take away" was the preferred term.
I wouldn't say carry out or take out, I'd say takeaway. I'd spell the noun as one word and always have an article with it, ie I'll get a takeaway. That's English English. My dictionary tells me that carry-out is a Scottish and US term and a quick search on Google UK gives me only Scottish restaurants as hits.
Here in the UK, we'd never say 'carry out' (or 'take out' for that matter), it's always 'take away'.
In fact, before I read your post, I'd never even heard the term 'carry out' before.
I had never heard "take away" and I've only heard "take out" on TV. I'm only familiar with "carry out."
NCIS_Crush
Emily Ryall, please don't be so quick to speak for the whole of the UK. In Scotland "carry-out" is the standard expression and "takeway" is rarely used.
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