Other forms: puppets
A puppet is a figure moved by hand or by strings to act out a story. A hand puppet, a puppet show, work the puppets.
The main kinds are the hand or glove puppet, the string puppet or marionette, and the rod puppet. Punch and Judy is the classic British puppet show. The figurative sense is very common in politics: a puppet is somebody controlled by another, and a puppet government or puppet regime is one installed and directed from outside. Note puppeteer, the person working them, and pull the strings, which is the idiom behind the metaphor.
1nounpuppetA figure moved by hand or strings to act out a story.
“The whole show is done with three puppets and a curtain.”
2nouncontrolledSomebody controlled by another.
“He was a puppet from the day he took office.”
puppet is a figure worked by somebody else.
Latin pupa meant a girl and then a doll — the same word that gives pupil, both the student and the small figure reflected in an eye. Puppet came through French poupette, a little doll, and the -et is the diminutive, so a puppet is a very small girl indeed.
Proto-Indo-European
*peh₂w-
Latin
pupa — doll, puppet; girl
Middle French
poupette
Middle English
popet
English, today
puppet
From Middle English popet, probably from, though attested earlier than, Middle French poupette, diminutive of poupée (cf. also Medieval Latin pupata), ultimately derived from Latin pupa (“doll, puppet; girl”). The nominal form first appears c. 1531, and the verbal form c. 1635. See also puppy.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA