verbal phr. (colloquial).—To make oneself conspicuous by a certain line of behaviour; to conduct oneself wildly or recklessly; to joke or frolic; also in a special sense applied to open flirtation on the part of both sexes.
French equivalents are canarder (based on canard = a ‘take in,’ an extravagant or absurd story); faire du jardin (popular).
1856. WHYTE-MELVILLE, Kate Coventry, ch. iii. With lynx-eyes she notes how Lady Carmine’s eldest girl is CARRYING ON with young Thriftless.
1876. BESANT and RICE, The Golden Butterfly, ch. xxxv. ‘She and I CARRIED ON for a whole season. People talked.
1884. S. L. CLEMENS (‘Mark Twain’), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, xxii. And all the time that clown CARRIED ON so it most killed the people.
CARRY ONE’S REAL ESTATE ABOUT ONE, verbal phr. (American).—To neglect the finger nails till they show a black rim; to go so unwashed as to display a considerable amount of what Palmerston called ‘matter in the wrong place.’
1877. J. HATTON, Celestials under the Stars and Stripes, in Belgravia, April, 224. We looked at the hands of several of the gamblers, and found that they CARRIED THEIR REAL ESTATE with them, as the Americans say of a person who neglects his finger-nails.
