The word 'taupe' entered English in the early 20th century as a direct borrowing from the French noun for 'mole', the small burrowing mammal. The French term itself derives from the Latin 'talpa', meaning 'mole'. The semantic connection lies in the colour of the mole's fur, which is a muted, dark brownish-grey. Thus, the word's journey from a Latin animal name to a modern English colour term is a classic example of a loanword where the name of an object becomes the name of one of its characteristic attributes.

The word is a simplex loanword from French. It cannot be meaningfully segmented into productive morphemes in English.