Word.ws English Dictionary

carpetbag

carpetbag noun: a traveling bag made from scraps of carpet and widely used in the United States (and elsewhere) in the 19ᵗʰ century.

carpetbag: a traveling bag made from scraps of carpet and widely used in the United States (and elsewhere) in...
Image: Sobebunny, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

carpetbag (plural carpetbags)

  1. A traveling bag made from scraps of carpet and widely used in the United States (and elsewhere) in the 19ᵗʰ century.
    • Pen jumped out of the carriage then, his carpet-bag in hand, and briskly determined to face his fortune.1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 74, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published...

Verb

carpetbag (third-person singular simple present carpetbags, present participle carpetbagging, simple past and past participle carpetbagged)

  1. (US) To come to a place or organisation with which one has no previous connection with the sole or primary aim of personal gain, especially political or financial gain.
    • The Five Star Movement has long railed against carpetbagging, but for all of Ms. D’Alessandro’s efforts to seem of the place — talking about her childhood in Naples and showing the bar where she had her first date — she clearly isn’t.2018 February 23, Jason Horowitz, “Italy’s ‘Five Star’ Grows Up Into a Real Party, Scandals and All”, in New York Times

Adjective

carpetbag (not comparable)

  1. (US) Having the characteristics of carpetbaggers.
    • carpetbag travels

Forms of carpetbag

Noun
pluralcarpetbags
alternative form (archaic)carpet-bag
Verb
third-person singular presentcarpetbags
present participlecarpetbagging
past participlecarpetbagged
pastcarpetbagged

Origin of carpetbag

From carpet + bag.

Words formed from carpetbag

Phrases with carpetbag

Questions about carpetbag

What does carpetbag mean?
Carpetbag means a traveling bag made from scraps of carpet and widely used in the United States (and elsewhere) in the 19ᵗʰ century.
What part of speech is carpetbag?
Carpetbag can be a noun, a verb or an adjective.
What is the plural of carpetbag?
The plural of carpetbag is carpetbags.

Words near carpetbag in the dictionary

  1. carpet-mongers
  2. carpetable
  3. Carpetania
  4. Carpetanian
  5. Carpetanians
  6. carpetbag
  7. carpetbag steak
  8. carpetbag steaks
  9. carpetbagged
  10. carpetbagger
  11. carpetbaggers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: carpetbag (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.

Last updated:

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