Real-life creepy crawlies are notorious for evoking feelings of disgust and anxiety — they’re even called “pests” — but the idiom “snug as a bug in a rug” has long evoked feelings of warmth, safety, and security. This phrase has endured since it was coined around 250 years ago, in part due to its rhyming nature.
Let’s start with the word “snug” and its nautical origins. While “snug” is most commonly used today as an adjective synonymous with “tight-fitting,” in the 17th century it described parts of a ship that were prepared for bad weather. This usage was extended in a figurative sense to mean making something comfortable. A 1603 play by Thomas Heywood contains an early example of the “snug as …” comparison: “… let us sleep as snug as pigs in pease-straw.”
The first-recorded use of “snug as a bug in a rug” came later, in a 1769 account of the Shakespeare Jubilee: “If she has the mopus’s, I’ll have her, as snug as a bug in a rug” (“mopus” meant “money”). This event was organized to honor the birth and legacy of William Shakespeare, but the phrase was not found in his plays. Instead, it was likely already in the common vernacular and just recorded for the first time in print after this event. More than 250 years after the Jubilee, people are still comparing their levels of comfort to bugs in rugs. Dictionary.com notes this phrase may have initially been used as an allusion to moth larva happily feeding on a rolled-up carpet. The English language certainly loves a rhyme, and we expect this phrase, even with its references to unwelcome pests, will remain popular for years to come.
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