Other forms: puppies
A puppy is a young dog. Too big for its paws, asleep within a minute of stopping.
The word covers roughly the first year, and puppy fat, puppy training and puppy food all belong to that stage. English uses it for human youth too, since puppy fat means the softness of a growing child and puppy love means an intense first crush that everybody expects to pass. Puppy dog eyes is the standard phrase for a pleading look. The plural is puppies, and pup is the short form.
1nounpuppyA young dog.
“They brought the puppy home at eight weeks.”
A puppy was a lapdog, and probably a doll before that. Old French poupée meant a doll or a puppet, which is where puppet comes from too, and the word pushed the older English whelp aside.
Proto-Indo-European
*peh₂w-
Old French
poupée
Middle English
*puppee
English, today
puppy
Built from
From earlier puppie (“a woman's pet dog”), of unknown origin, but probably from Middle English puppee, poupee, from Old French poupée, popée (“a doll; puppet”). More at puppet. Mostly displaced native whelp, from hwelp, whence Modern whelp and whelpie.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA