Puppy

How to spell puppy

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce puppy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does puppy mean?

1. nounA young dog, usually under a year old.

Puppy in a sentence

• The new puppy chewed through a pair of slippers overnight.

• They adopted a rescue puppy from the local shelter.

Where does puppy come from?

Language of origin: French

Puppy comes from the Middle French word poupée, meaning a doll or a little plaything, which itself traces back to the Latin pupa, meaning 'girl' or 'doll'. In the late 1400s English adopted the term first to describe a small ornamental lapdog kept as a toy rather than a working animal, and only later did it settle into its modern meaning of a young dog. The shift makes sense: a tiny pet dog was treated much like a doll or a darling plaything. The same Latin pupa also gave us 'pupil' (the small image of yourself reflected in someone's eye) and 'puppet', a little figure moved by strings. The double 'p' in the middle is the spelling point worth remembering, since the word grew from that pup-/poup- root with a doubled consonant before the affectionate -y ending.

How the word is built

• pupp- (from Middle French poupée: doll, plaything)
• -y (diminutive/affectionate suffix)