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Glite Dictionary
sapper

sapper

5 9.1
A soldier who digs trenches and clears mines for the army
  • noun
  • /ˈsæpər/
: zapador
  • During the assault, the sappers dug trenches to protect the advancing troops.
  • sappers dug
  • sappers during siege
  • company of sappers

Leave the Indigia live just for Psyops and the sappers.

Examples

  • The cattle cars or whatever they're sending are due to arrive at 1200 hours, provided, of course, that the Russian sappers have not blown up the track.

    Cross of Iron (1977)

  • They keep our heads down while his sappers make thirty yards of trench a day.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • - Those sappers have followed us...

    Predator (1987)

  • I think it was the sappers.

    Off Limits (1988)

  • The other sappers have gathered around the edge of the site.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • VC sappers blew the wall open.

    The Greatest Beer Run Ever (2022)

  • The sappers came first, then the first wave of soldiers, and when those bodies piled up at the perimeter, a second wave followed.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • Frank and I drove out to check with Lt. Stevens and the sapper crew, who were going over the area in an effort to turn up the murder weapon.

    Dragnet (1954)

  • 6,000 Bundeswehr sappers have just begun blowing up the Berlin Wall, Vova.

    Putin (2025)

  • A viaduct north of the monastery. Day. Kip is lowered by a pulley into the shaft the sappers have made around the bomb.

    Fiction book (1996)

Surface Forms

sapper singular
sappers plural

Morphology

sapper = sap (opaque) = sap + er

The word is historically built from 'sap' + '-er', but the military sense is not readily recoverable for an average learner from the common modern meaning of 'sap'.

Etymology

Sapper comes from the French word sappe meaning 'spade' and the verb sapper meaning 'to dig under'. So a sapper is a soldier who digs under and weakens enemy walls, and the English word sap ('to weaken') helps you remember that job.