Tales Of The Carpet Eaters

The study of language itself is a wonderful source of amusement, the origins and the development, etc., and the many languages themselves present endlessly fascinating possibilities. The points of intersection and divergence of languages that share a similar background can be surprising, or obvious, or dubious. The student can always find sources of information, but sorting them out can be difficult. They agree; they partially agree; they disagree. You can come to your own conclusions. You may be right, or you may be wrong, and it really doesn't matter. Language is a very elastic thing.

Take, for instance, the term, “carpet eater.”

I am currently one third of the way through the marathon epic that is “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.” One of the few silver linings in this COVID mess is time to read. The term carpet eater has a common meaning in English slang, and I have been familiar with it for many decades. Imagine my surprise when Shirer rather casually quotes a friend, a German anti-Nazi editor, as referring to Hitler as a carpet eater.* That took me rather aback, it did.

The editor made the reference in the original German, “ein Teppichfresser.” (Der Teppich: carpet; fressen, the verb to eat, applied to animals. For humans, the verb, to eat, is essen.) The matter was quickly cleared up to Shirer's satisfaction, if not to the satisfaction of anyone else.

I cannot judge the quality of Shirer's German, but he claims that the friend told him that Hitler was so hysterically nervous that he was literally throwing himself onto the floor and chewing the edge of the rug in a tizzy about Czechoslovakia. This is highly unlikely, since Teppichfresser is a slang term in German, strictly figuratively, for anyone who frequently flies off the handle in fits of rage.

The French also use the term for someone who is subject to fits of nerves, using it to indicate a person who may pace back and forth over the same space, wearing out that piece of carpet.

Note that in neither case does the term have any similarity with our impolite, but well known, usage in English. And no, Hitler was not on the floor biting the carpet. Nor was Eva Braun involved in any way.

*Kindle location 9554 to 9560, 31% mark.