Jeep

How to spell jeep

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce jeep

What does jeep mean?

1. nounA small, sturdy motor vehicle with four-wheel drive, built for rough terrain.

Jeep in a sentence

• The farmer drove his jeep along the muddy track to reach the far field.

• We hired a jeep for the safari so we could cross the dry riverbed.

Where does jeep come from?

Language of origin: Other

Jeep is an American coinage from the early 1940s, and its exact origin is genuinely debated. The most popular explanation reads it as a spoken-out version of the abbreviation 'GP', which is often glossed as 'general purpose' (the army designation for the small four-wheel-drive vehicle), though some historians doubt the official wording. A rival explanation points to Eugene the Jeep, a magical little creature in the Popeye comic strip of 1936 whose only sound was 'jeep'; soldiers may have borrowed the playful name for the nimble new vehicle. Whichever route is true, the word spread rapidly among American troops during the Second World War and was soon trademarked as a brand. Because the spelling simply mirrors the sound, it has no foreign roots to wrestle with, which is why it is one of the easier modern words to write.

How the word is built

• jeep (unanalysable single root, popularly traced to the military abbreviation 'GP')