Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a lesbian.

1985		‘Jennifer Blowdryer’ Modern English 74: homosexual women (n): Slot Lickers, Carpet Chewers, Muff Divers.
1989		P. Munro Sl. U. 54: carpet-muncher/rug-muncher female homosexual.
1998		I. Welsh Filth 5: Drummond’s had her frizzy blonde hair cut short, which makes her look even mair ay a carpet-muncher.
2001		OnLine Dict. of Playground Sl. 🌐 carpet licker, carpet muncher n. a lesbian f. supposed similarity between texture of carpet and a woman’s pubic hair.
2002		L.G. Surgeson ‘15 things not to say to a Lesbian’ on Daisy Realm on University of Wales 🌐 14. Do you prefer being called a carpet biter or a rug muncher, I can use both.
2003		‘The Shallow Grave Awards’ on Spleen! 🌐 Wade is a smirking carpet-biter and Novotna is Drago’s (‘I must break you’) lost brother.
2004		J. Ellroy ‘Hollywood Fuck Pad’ in Destination: Morgue! (2004) 223: Tell you read Ms. magazine. All the liberals and carpet munchers read it.
2020		S.A. Crosby Blacktop Wasteland 50: ‘The manager is this big bull dyke [...] So one night a couple of weeks ago, this carpet licker took Jenny out for drinks’.

2. a person who performs cunnilingus; note cit. 1999 is mis-defined as a v. when it should be a n. form.

1995		Eble Campus Sl. Dec. 1: carpet muncher – male who performs cunnilingus.
1999		‘Queer Sl. in the Gay 90s’ at Gaymart.com 🌐 Carpet Licker – To eat or to go down on the vagina in oral sex.
2003		Wonderland Concepts, Inc. & Matt Gidney ‘Ask Mitch’ 9 Jul. at MitchInWonderland.com 🌐 Fact is, in New York, it’s high near impossible to tell a tubesteak tarzan from a carpet muncher. Their personas have completely blurred together in this weird Kenneth Cole/non-comedogenic moisturizer haze.
2004		Eble Campus Sl. Apr. 2: carpetmuncher – someone, particularly a lesbian, who performs cunnilingus.

cunnilingus.

2000		‘The Fistgate Report’ Mass. News May 🌐 The ‘counseling’ included discussions of lesbian sex, oral-vaginal contact, or ‘carpet munching,’ as one student put it.
2002		B. Floyd Comments at GettingIt.com 🌐 Cunnilingus [...] carpet munching; cherry flip; chewing bubble gum; chow box; chow down; chowing; chow or chowing box; clam dinner; clean the carpet.
2004		CyberAge.com 🌐 Rug Munching 101. A man’s guide to eating bearded clams.
2007		‘Bootscooter’ August Moone 7:56 🌐 ‘Eatin’ pussy. Sloppin’ the trough. Carpet bumping. Eating at the Y. Clam diving’.

to perform cunnilingus.

2002

B. Floyd Comments at GettingIt.com 🌐 Cunnilingus [...] carpet munching; cherry flip; chewing bubble gum; chow box; chow down; chowing; chow or chowing box; clam dinner; clean the carpet.

(US) to perform cunnilingus.

1995		Eble Campus Sl. Dec. 5: munch someone’s carpet – perform cunnilingus.
1998		I. Welsh Filth 302: Too much munchin oan carpets wi Drummond, that’s the problem.

1. someone who becomes so enraged that they start chewing the carpet.

1984		Partridge DSUE (8th edn) 184/1: since ca. 1940.
2001		C.B. Morton ‘The Teenage Diary of Colin B. Morton’ Pt 7 at Beefheart.com 🌐 Suddenly there was interracial conflict everywhere. [...] They [i.e. the media] just carried on hacking away at the same old subject until something more newsworthy came along, playing into the hands of fans of the old one-bollocked carpet biter.

2. see also carpet-muncher

(Aus.) a businessman who owns land in the outback but rarely visits.

1912

Bulletin (Sydney) 12 Sept. 18/3: Touching this bike-in-war controversy, it is borne in on me that ‘Machete’ is but a carpet bushman, or George-street backblocker, or something similar. Had he had personal traffic with the remoteness of this vast land, he would have met plenty of men who bestride or push bikes, loaded with swag, billy, water-bag and tucker, over all sorts of country [...] and think nothing of it.

see carpet knight n. (1)

(UK society) a dance for close friends, held in one’s drawing room.

1909

J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era.

(US) an up-market nightclub.

1948		Herald-News (Passaic, NJ) 6 Aug. 11/4: ‘Any gambling joint woulkd be a carpet joint to that crowd,’ explained one [of the ‘sporting gentry’].
1951		Life 26 Mar. 36/2: He was running a ‘carpet joint’ (a plush gambling establishment, as opposed to the less swank ‘sawdust joint’) .
1961		J. Scarne Complete Guide to Gambling 239: About 1890 the game appeared [...] in a number of American carpet and sawdust joints.
1970		S. Ross Fortune Machine 7: There are carpet joints on the Strip, sawdust joints downtown [HDAS].
1981		in D.E. Miller Bk of Jargon.
1994		R. Laxalt Governor’s Mansion 96: We take no more than one thousand dollars from each casino — carpet joint or sawdust joint.
1999		(ref. to 1933) M. Gribben Meyer Lansky 🌐 Ch. vi: The Florida ‘carpet joints’ as the illegal casinos were known, breathed life into the depressed South Beach communities of Hollywood, Hallendale and Opalocka.
2002		(con. 1940s) Las Vegas Online Entertainment Guide 🌐 While the El Rancho Vegas and other 1940s resorts followed a western ranch-styled theme, the Flamingo was what Siegel called a ‘carpet joint.’ It was modeled after resort hotels in Miami.
2018		(con. 1963) L. Berney November Road 4: ‘High class all the way. A real carpet joint’.

(Aus.) a Muslim.

2021

P. Papathanasiou Stoning 119: ‘I don’t think they chuck rocks. I’m pretty sure thass just the carpet kissers’.

see separate entry.

(Aus.) an official reprimand.

1918

Aussie (France) VIII Oct. 6/1: ‘Want to get blown up?’ it asked. / I am proficient in the Aussie language, but was at a loss to know exactly whether this question referred to inflation, a carpet lecture, or an explosion.

see carpet knight n. (1)

(US drugs) for a user to search for crumbs of crack cocaine that may have been dropped onto a carpet.

2013

J. Stahl Happy Mutant Baby Pills 176: I dropped to my knees and started to study the floor [...] Carpet-mining, not to get technical [...] We’d run out of drugs and I was scouring the floor to see if we’d dropped any.

(drugs) smokers of crack cocaine who search the floor for any grains of the drug they may have dropped.

2001

ONDCP Street Terms 5: Carpet patrol — Crack smokers searching the floor for crack.

(US) a small child.

1975		L. Dills CB Slanguage 21: Carpet Monkeys: children.
2000		R. Wood Trade 🌐 When I didn’t immediately respond, she tugged my pant leg like a carpet rat.

a smooth, well-maintained road.

c.1698

B.E. Dict. Canting Crew.

(N.Z. prison) an item of pornography.

2001

D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 37/2: carpet shag n. a pornographic magazine.

a carpet-bag.

1840

R. Barham ‘Misadventures at Margate’ in Ingoldsby Legends (1842) 155: A little ‘gallows-looking chap’ [...] With a ‘carpet-swab’ and ‘muckingtogs,’ and a hat turned up with green.

sexual dalliance.

1581

B. Riche Farewell to Military Profession in Early Prose and Poetical Tracts (1853) I 23: This noble duke had no maner of skill in carpet trade.

(US drugs) a narcotics addict.

1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks 19/1: Carpet walker, a dopefiend, hophead, opium smoker.
1953		Anslinger & Tompkins Traffic In Narcotics 306: carpet-walker. A drug addict.
1971		E.E. Landy Underground Dict. (1972) 46: carpet walker n. (d) Confirmed addict.

see carpet knight n. (1)

1. in waiting, expected.

1851		Bell’s Life in London in Fights for the Championship (1855) 234: So long as the merry month of May [...] has this month been on the carpet.
1865		Dundee Advertiser 18 July 2/3: At Kidderminster, rioting was, as usual, ‘on the carpet.’ Indeed [...] the mob, ‘as usual,’ smashed the telegraph wires.
1869		Leicester Chron. 9 Oct. 8/3: There is a marriage ‘on the carpet’ in the Kirk family.

2. (orig. US) facing a reprimand, scolding or punishment; thus toe the carpet, dance on the carpet, to await and receive such a dressing down (where the image is of a fidgety, nervous person) [the carpet that stands before one’s superior’s desk].

1852		Leics. Mercury 26 June 3/5: Ten persons left this town for Australia on Tuesday last. One young man who has been brought up ‘on the carpet’, has taken a pickaxe and a spade, which he ‘calculates’ will be service to him.
1855		Hereford Jrnl 10 Oct. 3/6: To show cause why he should not contribute to its [i.e. a child’s] sustenance he was now had ‘on the carpet’. He thought it best not to deny paternity.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1888		Scribner’s Mag. ‘The Everyday Life of Railroad Men’ IV Jul.–Dec. 546: The mortification of being called into the superintendent’s office to explain some dereliction of duty is disguised by referring to the episode as ‘dancing on the carpet’.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 15: Carpet, on the carpet; when a subordinate is brought before his officer for some missdeed he is said to be on the carpet.
1899		Ade Fables in Sl. (1902) 120: Next Morning she had him up on the Carpet and wanted to know How About It.
1901		J. Flynt World of Graft 39: If he broke faith with me, and I was brought up on the carpet, I should do what a gun of my acquaintance claims is always his practice under such circumstances — ’squeal on the copper’.
1903		Bulletin (Sydney) 10 Dec. 40/2: No! I was never ’ad. I only toed the carpet once, and that come about in this way.
1905		Salt Lake Herald (UT) 19 Feb. 4/6: The National Baseball Commission [...] will call Lucas on the carpet.
1916		H.L. Wilson Somewhere in Red Gap 329: He orders Pete up on the carpet.
1919		Sun. Times (Perth) 9 Mar. 7/3: To come before the C.O. is termed ‘on the mat’.
1928		R.J. Tasker Grimhaven 92: I had been ‘on the carpet’ for some peccadillo at school.
1939		V. Davis Gentlemen of the Broad Arrows 222: He’s been on the carpet for being too kind-hearted to the lags.
1945		J. Fishman Names or Numbers 63: The prisoner did not know until called on the carpet the following day that he had even been ‘shot’ (reported).
1955		‘Blackie’ Audett Rap Sheet 93: A guard come to Panzeran’s cell and told him to be sure and make early breakfast next morning because he was going on the carpet. That meant he was going before the warden on some charge or other of violating rules.
1964		P. Terson Night to Make the Angels Weep (1967) II xvi: He’d have them on the carpet there, see.
1974		J. McNeil How Does Your Garden Grow Act III: senior: And sleep in your pyjamas! [...] Or I’ll put you on the mat, Jenkins! sam: Yessir! On the mat, sir.
1978		S. King Stand (1990) 219: He’ll have you on the carpet and he’ll chew your ass to a bloody rag.
1989		Kirk & Madsen After The Ball 285: When Wolf called Malcolm on the carpet, Malcolm blandly denied everything.
2001		D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 37/2: on the carpet = on report.
2010		K. Richards Life 62: Next thing I know I’m up before the disciplinary board. On the carpet.
2023		M. Herron Secret Hours 386: ‘I’d be on the carpet, he’d be in the wind, and you’d be writing a eulogy’.

3. attrib. use of sense 1.

1969

‘Iceberg Slim’ Pimp 39: Mine had been a carpet offence and I was on it in the office of the school President.

to interrogate.

1906

S. Ford Shorty McCabe 46: So we [...] locked ’em all in a room and put ’em on the carpet one by one.