Of rugs and carpets

oriental rugs

The word carpet stems from the Latin verb carpere, meaning to pluck or card, and so is closely associated with wool. From very ancient times carpet has been used to mean a woven fabric, usually of wool, which serves as a covering for furniture or floors.

The word rug is the Swedish rugg meaning rough entangled hair, and has come into common English usage in comparatively modern times.

Today it usually denotes a floorcovering of definite size and shape, often with a border, that does not com­pletely cover a room from wall to wall. (Early machine-made bordered rugs were called, for some unexplainable reason, "art squares.")