Word.ws English Dictionary

carpet bomb

carpet bomb verb: to bomb (an area) in such a manner that the ordnance covers the entire area without gaps.

Verb

carpet bomb (third-person singular simple present carpet bombs, present participle carpet bombing, simple past and past participle carpet bombed)

  1. To bomb (an area) in such a manner that the ordnance covers the entire area without gaps.
    • The infantry were destroyed after the enemy carpet bombed the ground they were occupying.
    • Russian bombers were carpet bombing the ridge directly above them, in a vain attempt to kill the Mujahideen fighters that plagued their operations on the ground.2008, Conrad Jones, Soft Target: Tank. II, page 237
    Synonyms:
    blanket-bomb

Noun

carpet bomb (plural carpet bombs)

  1. A bomb used in a carpet bombing.
    • This multiplicity of outlets work like carpet bombs that leave very little empty space for competition to be comfortable.2007, Services Marketing: Text And Cases
    • There was a whole new lexicon to learn: cluster bombs, fragmentation bombs, carpet bombs, napalm bombs, phosphorous bombs with their delicate spidery fingers stretching in all directions.2009, William Ayers, Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Antiwar Activist
  2. A bombing of this kind.
    • This underground arena features switches that trigger lasers, and a carpet bomb of the entire lower and upper levels.2004, Keats Hanson, James Bond 007: Everything Or Nothing: Prima's Official Strategy Guide
    • I watched in awe as the pans and glasses exploded halfway across the lawn, erupting from the tarp like a simulated war scenario where the plan of attack was a carpet bomb initiated from the sky.2007, Doug Green, No Wife No Kids No Plan

Examples of carpet bomb in a sentence

  • Vietnamese Air Force continued to carpet bomb any base areas that we found to be lucrative targets at the time.2010, Ken Welch, Tiger Hound: How We Won the War & Lost the Country, page 52:
  • Post World War II (WW II), terrorism against the people acquired a new dimension when America bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and later carpet bombed Vietnam with Napalm.2015, Ram Puniyani, Deconstructing Terrorist Violence: Faith as a Mask:
  • What he really means is that the psychics' powers under test functioned more like a carpet bomb than a precision missile.2010, William Little, The Psychic Tourist: A Voyage into the Curious World of Predicting the Future:
  • They were probably afraid that we would bury them in another carpet bomb of expletives.2014, Jerald Ford, When I Am King, volume 2, page 290:

Synonyms of carpet bomb

Forms of carpet bomb

Verb
third-person singular presentcarpet bombs
present participlecarpet bombing
past participlecarpet bombed
pastcarpet bombed
alternative formcarpet-bomb
Noun
pluralcarpet bombs

Words formed from carpet bomb

Questions about carpet bomb

What does carpet bomb mean?
Carpet bomb means to bomb (an area) in such a manner that the ordnance covers the entire area without gaps.
How do you use carpet bomb in a sentence?
Vietnamese Air Force continued to carpet bomb any base areas that we found to be lucrative targets at the time.
What part of speech is carpet bomb?
Carpet bomb can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of carpet bomb?
The past tense of carpet bomb is carpet bombed.

Words near carpet bomb in the dictionary

  1. carpet beater
  2. carpet beaters
  3. carpet bedding
  4. carpet beetle
  5. carpet beetles
  6. carpet bomb
  7. carpet bombed
  8. carpet bombing
  9. carpet bombings
  10. carpet bombs
  11. carpet bowling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: carpet bomb (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “carpet bomb.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/carpet_bomb. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.