airō

At its root the word names the simple physical act of raising: getting something up and off where it rests. The same verb covers raising a part of the body (the eyes toward heaven, the voice in prayer, a hand in an oath) and hoisting up an object so it can be thrown or moved.

This is the literal core the other meanings grow out of. To pick something up so as to carry it, and to take it away entirely, both begin with this one motion: lifting it from its place. Where the focus stays on the upward raising itself, rather than on carrying or removing, this is the sense in view.

Once something is lifted, it can be taken along. This meaning is about shouldering a load: picking up a mat, a basket, a body, or a tool and bearing it from one place to another. The classic picture is the healed man told to take up his bed and walk, and the gathering up of the leftover fragments into baskets.

It is also the verb behind taking up the cross. Jesus is not telling people merely to endure something but to pick it up and carry it, the way a condemned man shouldered the crossbeam to the place of execution. The weight is real and the carrying is deliberate.

The same lifting motion, pushed to its end, becomes removal: to lift a thing clean away so it is no longer there. This covers moving a stone from a tomb, carrying off a body, sweeping people away in a flood, stripping a kingdom or a sum of money from someone, and canceling a record of debt.

It reaches its weightiest use in the saying that Jesus is the one who takes away the sin of the world. The word does not mean to cover sin or to overlook it but to carry it off entirely, to lift the load away. The crowd shouting away with him is using the same verb in its harshest form: get him out of the way, do away with him.

This is also the sense at the sharp edge of the vine saying, where every branch that bears no fruit is taken away. Whether that means removed in judgment or, on a different reading, lifted up to be tended, hangs on this one verb, which can point either direction.