Rug

How to spell rug

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rug

What does rug mean?

1. nounA thick piece of fabric laid on a floor, smaller than a fitted carpet.

Rug in a sentence

• A woollen rug covered the cold tiles by the bed.

• They spread a picnic rug on the grass before lunch.

Where does rug come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Rug entered English in the 1500s from a Scandinavian source, closely related to the Norwegian dialect word 'rugga', meaning a coarse coverlet, and to the Swedish 'rugg', meaning rough or shaggy hair. The original idea was of something rough-textured and woolly, and indeed the earliest English uses described a heavy, coarse fabric or a blanket-like covering for the body rather than the floor. Over time the meaning shifted from a coverlet thrown over a person to a thick piece of fabric laid on the floor, which is the sense most familiar today. The word is a close cousin of 'rag', and both go back to the same Germanic notion of something rough and uneven. Because the spelling is short and entirely phonetic, the only trace of its rugged Norse past is the blunt, simple shape of the word itself.

How the word is built

• rug (single root; from a Scandinavian word for a rough or shaggy covering)