Etymology

sapper

S1A1P3P3E1R1

Today it means: A combat engineer; an engineer or a soldier engaged in attacking, destroying, and circumventing or building fortifications, bridges, and roads; a military engineer active in a combat zone. Full definition →

Middle French sappeur
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Middle French · borrowed fromsappeur
  2. English todaysapper

Borrowed from Middle French sappeur (French sapeur). By surface analysis, sap + -er.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.