Muppet

How to spell muppet

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce muppet

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does muppet mean?

1. nounAn informal British term for a foolish, clumsy, or incompetent person.

Muppet in a sentence

• Some muppet parked across two bays in the office car park.

• He felt like a complete muppet after locking his keys inside the car.

Where does muppet come from?

Language of origin: Other

Muppet is a twentieth-century coinage, invented by the American puppeteer Jim Henson when he created his troupe of foam-and-cloth characters in the 1950s. A popular account holds that he formed it by blending 'marionette' and 'puppet', but Henson himself later said this was a tidy explanation made up after the fact and that he simply liked the sound of the word. It was registered as a trademark and became a household name through the television programmes that featured the characters, spreading worldwide from the 1970s onward. The single 'p' at the start and the doubled 'p' in the middle are the only real spelling trap, since the word looks as though it should mirror 'puppet'. In British English it later took on an informal life of its own as a mild insult for a foolish or incompetent person, a sense that grew through everyday speech in the late twentieth century.

How the word is built

• mup- (coined element)
• -pet (echoing 'puppet'); treated as a single unanalysable coinage