meat puppet
1
9.9
- noun
- /miːt ˈpʌpɪt/
- Offensive
:
títere
- Sometimes it feels like we are all just meat puppets, following orders without thinking for ourselves.
Dude, we are just meat puppets walking around on this like giant floating rock through an infinite universe to create our own misery.
- Dude, we are just meat puppets walking around on this like giant floating rock through an infinite universe to create our own misery.
Examples
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Dude, we are just meat puppets walking around on this like giant floating rock through an infinite universe to create our own misery.
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I think we're all just... kind of meat puppets.
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We're not blood-filled meat puppets.
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If I thought these sociopaths who think they should have the final say over the bodies of strangers would be changed if they read it, I would pay for the printing and mailing myself and send it to each and every one of the smug, soulless meat puppets.
Blog text (13) -
He really was a meat puppet for Bruce Hammonds and the other big bank CEOs, who wrote the bankruptcy law themselves, in an alarmingly similar fashion to how Obamacare was drafted by big medicine's scribes.
Blog text (5) -
In the company, the workers acted like meat puppets, doing whatever the manager told them without question.
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He realized he was nothing more than a meat puppet, controlled by the whims of those in power.
Synonyms
152
5.6
A person controlled by others to do things for them
96
7.7
A person controlled by others to do unpleasant or dishonest tasks
Antonyms
How Controlled
Surface Forms
Morphology
meat + puppet
Although 'meat' lacks a dictionary entry here, its common meaning of flesh/body combined with 'puppet' (someone manipulated by others) yields the straightforward idea of a human who is controlled or used by others. This simple compositional logic (a 'human puppet') is predictable and likely understandable to a B1 learner who knows both constituent words, despite the expression's slangy register.
Etymology
Meat puppet may come from the image of a puppet made of meat — a real person's body moved like a toy. That strong picture shows why it means 'a person who acts without thinking and is controlled by others'.