carpet

millor:

...és venuda sovint com...

In the English text cited, "to carpet" sounds to me very much a one-off metaphor. Presumably both "to carpet" and "emmoquetar" are generally used literally, though I guess "carpeting" is not so widely practised in Catalan houses as in (Br)E ones.

We don't "widely practise" carpeting in Catalan homes because we never carpet bathrooms

As Max said, that sounds like a very one-off (not to say peculiar) metaphor. I'd have used "paved". Or perhaps "tiled", to coincide with what I'd do in the bathroom

But you are right, David. I once rented a flat in London that had carpet in the kitchen. I prefer not to think about it.

Lou wrote (direct to the list, not here, so I'm pasting it in):

"I'm surprised you find this peculiar. Perhaps this is another AmE/BrE difference, but "carpeted with" sounds completely natural to me. Google has 262,000 hits for "carpeted with" and the first few are metaphoric, like David's example:

'That valley was carpeted with bean plants'
The Temple de Caelestis is seen across a meadow carpeted with daisies
Villages 'carpeted' with cluster bombs.
Banks of Bsor river are carpeted with flowers (in spring).
Daily Kos's convention — the in-person gathering of the nation's most-read online political blog — was practically carpeted with presidential candidates.

I wouldn't used "paved with" except in the abstract sense, as in "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" and "tiled with" I would only use in a literal sense, if the material used were indeed tiles."

Lou, all your examples are fine for me - perhaps because bean plants, daisies, flowers are "soft", carpet-like materials and the others are very clearly metaphorical. I have no problem with metaphorically "carpeting", but I do have a problem doing it with something like a solar panel. Perhaps it's too stiff and metallic, I don't know.

The "tiled" thing was a joke, prompted by David's horrible insight into certain British furnishing habits

My issue was not whether "to carpet" could easily be used metaphorically in English (and it may be that AmE uses this metaphor more readily than BrE, beyond clichés like "carpeted with daisies"), but whether it was safe to assume that literal translation of the metaphor as "emmoquetar" was appropriate in a general dictionary.

BTW I would find "DK's convention ... was practically carpeted with presidential candidates" pretty hard to interpret. If it hadn't come supported by the other examples, I'd have suspected a misprint. I.e. the sense of the utterance requires a word meaning "full", or "crammed", but I can't get that from "carpeted".

If the most common use can be "carpeted with daisies" or so, then I would say the best translation for "to carpet with" is "encatifar de", with all the notes or comments you want to attach.

By the way, the example was taken from bbc.co.uk, so it'd be BrE in this case, at least.

One note for the future dictionary of set phrases: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" is "de bones intencions, l'infern n'és ple".