Teddy

How to spell teddy

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce teddy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does teddy mean?

1. nounA soft stuffed toy in the shape of a bear, often given to children.
2. nounA woman's close-fitting one-piece undergarment combining a top and briefs.

Teddy in a sentence

• The toddler refused to sleep without his worn teddy.

• The boutique displayed a lace teddy in the window.

• She sewed a new button eye onto the old teddy.

• She packed a silk teddy for the weekend away.

Where does teddy come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word is an eponym, a word formed from a person's name, and that person was the American president Theodore Roosevelt, whose nickname was Teddy. The story begins in 1902, when Roosevelt, on a hunting trip in Mississippi, refused to shoot a captured bear that had been tied up for him, considering it unsporting. A newspaper cartoon by Clifford Berryman dramatised the moment, and a Brooklyn shopkeeper soon began selling stuffed toy bears that he called Teddy's bears. The plush toy caught on rapidly on both sides of the Atlantic, and the full phrase teddy bear was shortened to plain teddy in affectionate everyday use. The much later sense of a woman's one-piece undergarment, recorded from the 1920s, borrowed the same cosy, familiar name, though the exact reason for the choice is not certain.

How the word is built

• Teddy (pet form of the name Theodore)
• -y (diminutive/familiar suffix)