puppet

plural puppets

1. Any small model of a person or animal able to be moved by strings or rods, or in the form of a glove.
2. figurativelyA person, country, etc, controlled by another.

   These men , from no worse motive that could be discovered than a thirst after knowledge beyond their sphere , committed burglary upon the barn in which the puppets had been consigned to repose

   1820 March, [Walter Scott], The Monastery. A Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Co., and John Ballantyne, […], →OCLC

   1 more example

   Every act of a Roman, from birth to death, from dawn to night, was controlled and supervised by some presiding deity. Man was thus virtually a symbolic puppet in the hands of the Roman pantheon.

   1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 209

   Synonyms: monkey, creature, sport

3. obsoleteA poppet; a small image in the human form; a doll.
4. engineeringThe upright support for the bearing of the spindle in a lathe.

present singular third person puppets · participle present puppeting · participle past puppeted · past puppeted

1. alsofigurativelytransitiveTo control or manipulate like a puppet.