Other forms: rugs
A rug is a small soft floor covering that does not reach the walls. You can pick it up and shake it.
Size is the whole difference between a rug and a carpet, since a carpet is fitted and a rug is laid on top. Persian rugs and sheepskin rugs are the classic kinds. The word also means a blanket for the knees, especially in a car or on a picnic, and horses wear rugs in cold weather. English has a good idiom in pulling the rug from under somebody, which means removing their support without warning.
1nounrugA small thick floor covering laid over part of a floor.
“There was a threadbare rug in front of the fire.”
A rug was shaggy before it was a floor covering. Old Norse rǫgg meant shagginess or a tuft, from a word for long wool, and it belongs with rugged and rough.
Proto-Germanic
*rawwō — long wool
Old Norse
rǫgg — shagginess, tuft
Middle English
*rugge
English, today
rug
Built from
unknown; probably of gmq - origin; perhaps inherited via Middle English rugge (suggested by ruggy (“hairy, shaggy, bristly”) and rugged (“hairy, shaggy, rugged”)), from Old Norse rǫgg (“shagginess, tuft”), from Proto-Germanic rawwō (“long wool”), probably related to rūhaz (“rough”), related to English rag and rough. Cognate with dialectal Norwegian rugga (“coarse coverlet”), Swedish rugg (“rough entangled hair”), related to rag and rough. Compare also Old English rȳhe (“rug, rough covering, blanket”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA