carpet

plural carpets

1. countableuncountableA fabric used as a complete floor covering.

   A great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which covered the floor; as, again, the arm-chair in which Bunting now sat forward, staring into the dull, small fire.

   1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], →OCLC, page 0016

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   The railways are anxious to refurbish their stations and rolling stock when they can get labour and materials, although it is unlikely that they contemplate deep carpets in wayside waiting rooms. Lack of carpets at present is not confined to railways, and roaring fires in the present fuel scarcity would probably be considered anti-social in wayside waiting rooms.

   1946 March and April, “State Railway Dreams”, in Railway Magazine, page 67

   The half-dozen pieces […] were painted white and carved with festoons of flowers, birds and cupids. To display them the walls had been tinted a vivid blue which had now faded, but the carpet, which had evidently been stored and recently relaid, retained its original turquoise.

   1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 1, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC

2. countablefigurativelyuncountableAny surface or cover resembling a carpet or fulfilling its function.

   the grassy carpet of this plain

   1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iii]

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   Way deep in left field, where the carpet of green sloped upward to a terrace and greeted the thick line of trees, he reached out his glove.

   2009, Loren Long, Phil Bildner, Magic in the Outfield, page 47

3. countableuncountableAny of a number of moths in the geometrid subfamily Larentiinae
4. countableobsoleteuncountableA wrought cover for tables.

   Tables and beds covered with copes instead of carpets and coverlets.

   1655, Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain; […], London: […] Iohn Williams […], →OCLC, (please specify |book=I to XI)

5. countableslanguncountablevulgarA woman's pubic hair.

present singular third person carpets · participle present carpeting · participle past carpeted · past carpeted

1. transitiveTo lay carpet, or to have carpet installed, in an area.

   After the fire, they carpeted over the blackened hardwood flooring.

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   The builders were carpeting in the living room when Zadie inspected her new house.

2. figurativelytransitiveTo substantially cover something, as a carpet does; to blanket something.

   Popcorn and candy wrappers carpeted the floor of the cinema.

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   Georgian and Regency houses cluster picturesquely around the sloping village green, which in springtime is carpeted with daffodils.

   1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 194, about Gainford, Co. Durham

   2017, Jennifer S. Holland, For These Monkeys, It’s a Fight for Survival., National Geographic (March 2017)http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/03/macaques-monkeys-indonesia-endangered-pet-trade/ The town of Tompasobaru, a six-hour drive from Tangkoko, is known for the fragrant cloves that carpet the front yards of homes, drying on tarps in the sun. But in the town’s open market, the air hung heavy with the metallic smell of the butcher’s wares.

3. UKtransitiveTo reprimand.

   Even Colonel Yakov, so recently carpeted by St Petersburg, was reported to be back in the Pamirs.

   1990, Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game, Folio Society, published 2010, page 428

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   At 4pm, the phone went. It was The Sun: 'We hear your daughter's been expelled for cheating at her school exams...' She'd made a remark to a friend at the end of the German exam and had been pulled up for talking. As they left the exam room, she muttered that the teacher was a 'twat'. He heard and flipped—a pretty stupid thing to do, knowing the kids were tired and tense after exams. Instead of dropping it, the teacher complained to the Head and Deb was carpeted.

   1992 June 24, Edwina Currie, Diary