to cart away
- phrasal verb
- /kɑrt əˈweɪ/
- Informal
- The city hired a company to cart away the waste from the recent cleanup of the park.
- cart away the rubble
- cart away tons of junk
- carted away by truck
Examples
-
I had to decipher the news: Carroll Byrd had given away the downstairs furnishings and the Oriental rugs to distant relations who had shown up in U-Hauls to cart them away.
Fiction book (1997) -
Whatever was left of my father's car has either been carted away or ground down into the grit under my feet.
Fiction book (2002) -
I got in there before they carted it all away.
-
Its stone would have been carted away for reuse and the site built over.
-
The box could then have been carted away in a sanitation truck.
Blog text (18) -
The washing machine in the basement would be carted away to the junk heap.
Fiction book (2001) -
The remaining floor of the Babri Mosque that survived from 1992 was torn up and carted away.
Academic text (2004) -
From her window, she could see sofas and end tables being carried across the neat lawn and loaded into trucks to be carted away.
Fiction book (1997) -
Even with paying to have the remaining solid waste carted away, some grocery stores are saving $260/month/store, which adds up to significant savings for chains with a number of stores receiving our service.
Academic text (2001) -
After the heavy storm, workers began to cart away the fallen branches and debris from the streets.
Synonyms
To move people or goods from one place to another, often by vehicle
To carry something in a vehicle or over a long distance
To move people or things away, sometimes because of strong feeling
To carry something, often heavy, from one place to another
To take away large or heavy things using a vehicle
To take something away using a truck or van
To take someone or something away by vehicle, often quickly and without care
To take a person to another place or to move someone's feelings suddenly
To move something by making it roll on its round parts
Antonyms
How Thorough
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to take or remove by transporting' is directly derivable from combining 'cart' (to haul or lug) with 'away' (to another place). This follows a common English verb + away compositional pattern that signals removal or displacement, so a B1 learner who knows both words would readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Cart away comes from the image of loading heavy or unwanted things onto a cart and moving them away to another place. So it now means 'to take or remove something by transporting it', especially something bulky or unwanted.