Other forms: doormats
A doormat is the rough mat at the entrance where you wipe your shoes. Bristly, usually brown, and rarely thanked.
Coir is the traditional material and many carry a message, from welcome to something more discouraging. Keeping a key under one is the least secure hiding place in the world and everybody still does it. The figurative sense is a real insult, since calling somebody a doormat means they let other people walk all over them without complaint, and it is used as a warning as often as a description.
From door + mat.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Around the House, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 6 of A Man Called Ove.
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