English

Noun

carpetbagger ‎(plural carpetbaggers)

1. (politics, historical, chiefly US) An immigrant from the Northern to the Southern States after the American Civil War of 1861–5, especially one who went South to gain political influence; hence, someone intervening in the politics of an area with which they are thought to have no real connection.

   Though he lived and worked in Los Angeles for sixteen years, the candidate for Attorney General is no carpetbagger; he was born and raised in this state and graduated from the state university.

   He's just a carpetbagger who was surprised to find that Southerns are not like the cast of The Dukes of Hazzard or Deliverance.

2. (pejorative, by extension) One who comes to a place or organisation with which they have no previous connection with the sole or primary aim of personal gain, especially political or financial gain.
   • 2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin 2010, p. 339:

     By the tenth century, out of the diversity of these Christianized Anglo-Saxon kingdoms emerged one of the most coherent political units in Europe, a single monarchy of England, with a precociously centralized government which eventually fell like a ripe plum into the grateful hands of Norman carpetbaggers in 1066.

Related terms

• carpetbag

Translations

See also

• carpetbagger on Wikipedia.Wikipedia