the.com/meeple
a tiny wooden person you'll defend a kingdom for and forget your own name over
means A small figure, often shaped like a person and traditionally made of wood, used as a player's token in board games.
from A blend of "my" + "people," coined relatively recently (around 2000) by a player describing the little wooden figures in the game Carcassonne. The word spread through the board-gaming community and stuck, eventually earning a place in mainstream dictionaries — a rare case where we can actually trace a coinage to a casual moment of play rather than a misty ancient root.
- coined
- Invented in 2000 for Carcassonne by player Alison Hansel
- word origin
- Blend of my and people
- now official
- Added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2021
- shape
- Headless humanoid silhouette, instantly recognizable worldwide
- collectors
- Custom meeples sell for more than some games
catan — board game where wooden tokens represent players, published by klaus teuber in 1995
carcassonne — tile-laying game featuring small wooden followers placed on medieval landscape tiles since 2000
agricola — worker placement game using wooden farmer tokens designed by uwe rosenberg in 2007