Imp

How to spell imp

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce imp

What does imp mean?

1. nounA small mischievous demon or sprite, or by extension a playfully naughty child.

Imp in a sentence

• The fairy tale described a tiny imp who hid the farmer's tools every night.

• Their youngest son is a cheerful little imp who unties everyone's shoelaces.

Where does imp come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word began in Old English as 'impa' or 'impe', which named a young shoot, sapling, or graft set into a tree to make it grow. That horticultural sense came from the Late Latin 'impotus', a grafted shoot, which in turn traces back to the Greek 'emphytos', meaning 'engrafted' or 'implanted'. Because a graft is the new growth of a plant, the word slid naturally into meaning a child or offspring, much as we still call a youngster a 'scion' or a 'sprout'. By the late medieval period English speakers were talking about an 'imp of Satan' or 'imp of the devil', a child or lesser member of that wicked family, and over time the demonic half of the phrase took over so that 'imp' alone came to mean a small, mischievous demon. From there it softened into the affectionate label for a naughty but harmless child that we still use today. The spelling stayed compact and unchanged, so the only real trap is remembering it is a tidy three letters with no silent ending.

How the word is built

• imp (a single Old English root meaning 'young shoot' that later came to mean 'offspring' and then 'little demon'); no prefix or suffix