[f. prec. sb.]
1. trans. To cover or spread with a carpet. Hence Carpeted ppl. a.
a. 1626. Bacon, New Atl. A fair Chamber richly hanged and carpeted under Foot.
1811. Lett. fr. Engl., I. xiv. 161. The room is carpeted.
1849. C. Brontë, Shirley, x. 142. She noiselessly paced … the carpeted floor.
1860. Emerson, Cond. Life, Wealth, Wks. (Bohn), II. 348. A sumptuous ship has floored and carpeted for him the stormy Atlantic.
2. transf. To cover or strew as with a carpet.
1728. Ramsay, Ep. Somerville. These delightful flowers, Which carpet the poetic fields.
1817. J. F. Pennie, Royal Minstr., V. 339. The yellow leaves that carpet autumn’s groves.
1865. Gosse, Land & Sea (1874), 216. Clumps of pale primroses are carpeting the hollows.
3. To place on a carpet. rare. (Cf. pillow.)
1821. Byron, Juan, III. lxvii. Haidee and Juan carpeted their feet On crimson satin.
4. colloq. To call (a servant) into the parlor, etc., to be reprimanded; to reprimand, ‘call over the coals.’ (Cf. CARPET sb. 2 d.)
1840. H. Cockton, Val. Vox, xli. They had done nothing! Why were they carpeted?
1871. Daily News, 23 Sept., 2/6. When they [Colonel Burnaby and Captain Annesley] were ‘carpeted’ [by the Jockey Club] to account for the suspicious running of the mare Tarragona with Michel Grove.
