door-mat
1. a. A mat placed before a door for cleaning the shoes before entering.
| 1665 Hooke Microgr. 6 A very convenient substance to make Bed-matts, or Door-matts of. 1808 Med. Jrnl. XIX. 541 Of this plant..door mats or basses are made. 1884 J. W. Ebsworth Roxb. Ball. V. ii. p. xi, Our jesting here upon the door-mat with the Reader. |
b. fig. Applied to a person upon whom people ‘wipe their boots’.
| 1861 Dickens Gt. Expect. I. xii. 207 She asked me and Joe whether we supposed she was door-mats under our feet, and how we dared to use her so. 1899 Westm. Gaz. 15 Apr. 2/3 ‘Door-mat’ duty was never the portion of the one who was to be four times Prime Minister. 1915 Mrs. H. Ward Eltham House x. 172 It's no good playing doormat. You've got to make people afraid of you. 1930 Observer 20 Apr. 5/5 She is not such a nullity and ‘doormat’ as Miss Byron. 1959 M. M. Kaye House of Shade xii. 163 A nice kind sugar-daddy of the adoring door-mat type. 1961 Wodehouse Service with Smile vi. 90 On these occasions he ceased to be a human doormat whom an ‘Oh, Clarence!’ could quell. |
2. slang. a. A beard or moustache. b. = door-step b.
| 1909 J. R. Ware Passing Eng. 115/2 Door-mat, the name given by the people to the heavy and unaccustomed beards which the Crimean heroes brought home from Russia in 1855–56... By 1882 the term came to be applied to the moustache only. 1935 A. J. Cronin Stars look Down i. i. 15 Here..have a doormat, do. |