▪ I. ˌcarpet-ˈbag, n.
1. a. A travelling bag, properly one made of carpet.
| 1830 Boston Directory 28 (Advt.). 1836 Dickens Early Coaches in Sk. Boz II. 173 The new carpet-bag you bought. 1844 Disraeli Coningsby i. v. (R.) Coningsby..had lost the key of his carpet-bag. 1858 Hawthorne Fr. & It. Jrnls. (1872) I. 1 Our dozen trunks and half-dozen carpet-bags, being already packed and labelled. |
b. attrib., as in carpet-bag adventurer, ˌcarpet-bag government, ˌcarpet-bag rule (U.S. slang): see carpet-bagger.
| 1874 Fraser's Mag. Aug. 155 The double curse of negro and carpet-bag rule. 1878 N. Amer. Rev. CXXVI. 279 A ring composed of carpet-bag adventurers. 1886 Dicey Engl. Case agst. Home Rule 108 The so-called Carpet Bag Governments, that is..the rule of Northern adventurers who were kept in office throughout the South by the Negro Vote. |
2. Rhyming slang. = drag n. 8 b.
| 1938 Sharpe S. of Flying Squad 330 Carpet (or Carpet Bag, or Drag), three months' imprisonment. |
3. Comb. carpet-bag steak, a steak stuffed with oysters.
| 1958 Times 28 Aug. 7/7 At the Gas Council stand she can see ground nut stew, carpet bag steaks, biryani..being prepared. 1969 Times 22 Dec. 9/8 Many ‘foreign’ dishes are really British. Like Australian ‘carpetbag steak’—rare fillet stuffed with oysters. |
▪ II. ˈcarpet-ˌbag, v. colloq. (orig. and chiefly U.S.).
[f. the n.]
intr. To travel with very little luggage (see also quot. 1889). Also transf.
| 1872 Trans. Ill. Dept. Agric. 1871 IX. 266 Almost the entire force of our common schools tends to..send [our young men]..‘carpet bagging’, down South. 1889 Century Dict., Carpet-bag, to act or live in the manner of a carpet-bagger. (U.S. slang.) 1890 Congress. Rec. 4 June 5598/2 It has been stated that Mr. McDuffie carpet bagged from somewhere down into Alabama... Now I will tell the House how Judge McDuffie happened to carpet-bag down into that district. 1968 A. Williams Brotherhood i. iv. 51, I don't have to carpet-bag to your kind of publicity, Owen. Now piss-off. |