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''career'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260717144815-00-⌔

career - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

career (plural careers)

  • One’s calling in life; one’s working occupation or profession, especially when pursued seriously or over a long period of time.
    • ✤ *When they’ve tortured and scared you for twenty-odd years,/Then they expect you to pick a career *1
  • The course, evolution, and ongoing advancement of one’s working life, especially in one particular field.
    • ✤ Washington’s career as a soldier
    • ✤ This scandal could ruin his career.
    • ✤ He regretted focusing on his career to the exclusion of his family.
    • ✤ Devils Lake is where I began my career as a limnologist in 1964, studying the lake’s neotenic salamanders and chironomids, or midge flies.2
  • The general course of one’s action or conduct in life, or in a particular area of life.
    • ✤ As I explored the possibility of a library science path, having previously been employed in libraries during my school career and afterwards, I decided that I needed to actually experience work in a library setting full time again […]3
  • (archaic) Speed.
    • ✤ What rein can hold licentious wickedness
      When down the hill he holds his fierce career?      4
    • ✤ *when a horse is running in his full career *5
    • ✤ It may be admitted that Democracy, in all meanings of the word, is in full career; irresistible by any Ritter Kauderwalsch or other Son of Adam, as times go.6
  • A jouster’s path during a joust.
    • ✤ These knights, therefore, their aim being thus eluded, rushed from opposite sides betwixt the object of their attack and the Templar, almost running their horses against each other ere they could stop their career.7
  • (obsolete) A short gallop of a horse. [16th–18th c.]
    • ✤ It is said of Cæsar […] that in his youth being mounted upon a horse, and without any bridle, he made him run a full cariere [tr. carriere], make a sodaine stop, and with his hands behind his backe performe what ever can be expected of an excellent ready horse.8
    • ✤ Such littleness damps the heat, and weakens the force of genius; as we check a horse in his career, and rein him in when we want him to amble9
  • (falconry) The flight of a hawk.
  • (obsolete) A racecourse; the ground run over.
    • ✤ *to think of going back again the same career *10

Verb

career (third-person singular simple present careers, present participle careering, simple past and past participle careered)

  • To move rapidly straight ahead, especially in an uncontrolled way.
    • ✤ Synonym: careen
    • ✤ The car careered down the road, missed the curve, and went through a hedge.
    • ✤ He likens the story of his 20s to “a fully fuelled jumbo jet just reaching take-off point and having to slam on the brakes. You’ve got this enormous bloody thing careering off the end of the runway, through the fence, through the house next door, bursting into flames and me crawling out and scraping my wounds for 10 years. I won’t be flying that one again.”11
    • ✤ However, the hosts hit back and hit back hard, first replacement hooker Andrew Hore sliding over, then Williams careering out of his own half and leaving several defenders for dead before flipping the ball to Nonu to finish off a scintillating move.12
    • ✤ This secondary collision, head-on with a closing speed of 142mph, caused the DVT to veer off to the left. Many of the coaches behind it overturned and careered into an adjacent field.13

Adjective

career (not comparable)

  • Doing something professionally, for a living (generally said of something that is not a commonplace job, e.g. criminal activity).
    • ✤ a career burglar
    • ✤ Studies on homeless income find that the typical “career panhandler” who dedicates his time overwhelmingly to begging can make between 1,500 a month.14
  • (loosely) Synonym of serial (“doing something regularly”).
    • ✤ a career rapist

Etymology

Mid 16th century, from French carrière (“road; racecourse”), from Italian carriera, from Old Occitan carreira, from Late Latin carrāria based on Latin carrus (“wheeled vehicle”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European ﹡ḱr̥sós, from ﹡ḱers- (“to run”); alternatively, from Middle French carriere, from Old Occitan.

Pronunciation

  • (Western)
    • Homophones: chorea, Korea (in fast non-rhotic speech)
    • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /kəˈɹɪə/
    • IPA: (General American)/kəˈɹɪɹ/, /kəˈɹɪ.ɚ/
      • Audio (General American): 🔊
  • (South Asia)
    • IPA: /kəˈrɪjə(r)/
      • Homophone: currier (stress neutralized)
    • (spelling pronunciation) IPA: /ˈkarɪjə(r)/
      • Homophone: carrier
  • Rhymes: -ɪə(ɹ)

Printed 2026-07-17.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1971, “Working Class Hero”, in John Lennon (lyrics), John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, performed by John Lennon: ↩

  2. 2012 January, Douglas Larson, “Runaway Devils Lake”, in American Scientist ‎, volume 100, number 1, archived from the original on 23 May 2012, page 46: ↩

  3. 2002, Priscilla K. Shontz, Steven J. Oberg, Jump Start Your Career in Library and Information Science, page 21: ↩

  4. c. 1599, William Shakespeare, Henry V, act 3, scene 3: ↩

  5. 1648, John Wilkins, Mathematicall Magick. Or, The Wonders that may be Performed by Mechanicall Geometry. […], London: […] M[iles] F[lesher] for Sa[muel] Gellibrand […], →OCLC: ↩

  6. 1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “chapter XIII, Democracy”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book III (The Modern Worker): ↩

  7. 1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC: ↩

  8. 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 48, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book I, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC: ↩

  9. 1756, William Guthrie (translator), Of Eloquence (originally by Quintillian): ↩

  10. a. 1587, Philippe Sidnei [i.e., Philip Sidney], “”, in [Fulke Greville; Matthew Gwinne; John Florio], editors, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia [The New Arcadia], London: […] [John Windet] for William Ponsonbie, published 1590, →OCLC: ↩

  11. 2003 October 16, Emma Brockes, quoting DBC Pierre, “How did I get here?”, in The Guardian ‎: ↩

  12. 2011 September 16, Ben Dirs, “Rugby World Cup 2011: New Zealand 83-7 Japan”, in BBC Sport ‎: ↩

  13. 2021 February 24, Greg Morse, “Great Heck: a tragic chain of events”, in RAIL, number 925, page 39: ↩

  14. 2012, Arthur Gillard, Homelessness, page 38: ↩

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