cut a rug

I was obviously born in the wrong time. damn it. That sax though...

The term to "cut a rug" first started to emerge as a slang term for dancing in the 1920s. Use of the phrase persisted well into the 1940s, although the popularity of the term has since faded. An author writing in vintage vernacular might describe her characters cutting a rug to transport the reader back to the era in which the book is supposed to be set. Among small sectors of urban communities, this slang term experienced a brief resurgence in the late 1990s.

Like most slang, the origins of "cut a rug" as a synonym for dancing are disputed. Several competing theories to explain the idea have been bandied about, but none have been firmly proved. This is often the case with slang, which sometimes seems to catch on overnight. The murky origins of such terms are both fun and frustrating to explore, especially for historians of language. Especially with expressions as graphic as this one, many long to know who first used the saying, and when.