A kind of good, thick, patterned carpet — and originally a place. Axminster is a small town in Devon, in the south-west of England, where a famous carpet factory started in the 1750s. The carpets were so admired that the town's name became the name of the product, the way we say 'champagne' or 'cheddar'. Today it means two slightly different things depending on who is speaking. To ordinary people, an Axminster is simply a high-quality woven carpet with a pattern in it — the sort you picture in a hotel lobby, an old cinema, or a grandmother's front room. To people in the carpet trade, it is a technical term for a specific weaving method, where each tuft of yarn is cut and inserted separately, which is what lets the carpet carry many colours and complicated designs. So a carpet can be called Axminster even if it was made in China or Belgium — the word now names the technique, not the place. It is much more common in British English than American. It is usually capitalised, and it often appears with a slight sense of old-fashioned quality — comfortable, respectable, a bit grand, maybe a bit dated.

阿克明斯特地毯（一種有花紋的高級織花地毯）。台灣通常直接講「阿克明斯特地毯」或在業界講「阿克明斯特織法」；不是普通住家用語，多出現在飯店、劇院或地毯業的規格說明裡。