Talk:carpet munching

chewing the carpet

an apparently unrelated expression relating to hyperventilation and loss of emotional bearings is chewing the carpet. i saw it for the first time just now and thought that someone had mistaken the lesbian sense as a general purpose term of abuse, but apparently these two expressions are unrelated. —Soap— 09:17, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Possibly related to chew the scenery. Perhaps chewing on soft objects is a basic human instinct that some people resort to in stressful times, and this idiom has been coined more than once. But still, chew the scenery is likely older, and chew the carpet may be just a variant of it. —Soap— 11:25, 16 August 2023 (UTC)