puppet

The journey of 'puppet' begins with the Latin word 'pupa', meaning a girl or a doll, which also gave us 'pupil' (of the eye) and 'puppy'. Through Vulgar Latin and into Middle French, it acquired the affectionate diminutive suffix '-ette', becoming 'poupette', a little doll. English borrowed this term in the 16th century, initially referring to a doll or a figurine. The core semantic logic evolved from a simple doll to a doll manipulated by strings or hands, and by metaphorical extension in the 16th century, to a person whose actions are controlled by an external force, perfectly capturing the concept of a lack of independent will.

The word 'puppet' is a simplex loanword. It entered English from Middle French 'poupette', a diminutive of 'poupe' (doll), which itself derived from Vulgar Latin 'puppa', a variant of Latin 'pupa' (girl, doll). The ultimate origin is obscure but may be imitative of a child's sound.