Carpets &
Rugs
We
walk on them all the time, but do we ever take the time to think of their
etymologies?
The
word carpet
made its way into English in the 1200s, meaning coarse cloth, tablecloth or bedspread. It entered English from the Old
French word carpite, which referred to heavy,
decorated cloth. This came from the Medieval Latin word carpite,
which began with the word carpere, to card or to pluck. This most likely had to do with the fact
that wool, cotton, and other weaving materials required some sort of plucking
before they could be wrassled into threads or yarn, and then woven into cloth.
It
wasn’t until the 1400s that carpets clearly belonged on floors.
Oddly,
rugs didn’t start on the floor either. The word rug entered English in
the 1550s, from Norwegian rugga, meaning coarse fabric or coverlet.
It took until the 1800s for rugs to land soundly on the floor.
Some
rug
&
carpet tidbits:
Though
nobody’s sure when the term roll out the red carpet became
popular, the custom of rolling out a red carpet
to celebrate royalty or popularity appears to have begun in ancient Greek myth
when Clytaemnestra rolled one out for Agamemnon.
1769
to be snug as a bug in a rug
1823
to be
called on the carpet
1940
theatre slang labeled a toupee a rug
1942
to cut
a rug
1953
to sweep
something under the carpet
1968
the word rugrat was born
So,
good followers, what rug- or carpet-related thoughts do
you have?