meat puppet

See also: meatpuppet

English

Pronunciation

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Noun

meat puppet (plural meat puppets)

1. A human body without consciousness.
   • 1991 ·, John Sievert, Death Zone Attack, page 52:

     Blood-spurting meat puppets did herky-jerky hulas as the lethal barrage of multipurpose rounds struck their targets with pinpoint accuracy and devastating results.

   • 1997, Jan Zita Grover, North Enough: AIDS and Other Clear-Cuts, page 69:

     He never really woke again, not in a form I could say good-bye to; he became simply a meat puppet in an immense bed, a pistil in a rose.

   • 2007, Marilyn Jaye Lewis, Entangled Lives: Memoirs of 7 Top Erotica Writers, page 128:

     I eat his galactic dream hole; I plow him into a meat-puppet stupor, shoot deep inside his five-star ass, and suck out the whipped cream for dessert till his rocket shoots stars.

2. A person who mindlessly follows the commands of others.
   • 1998, Neil Spiller, Digital Dreams: Architecture and the New Alchemic Technologies, page 69:

     This takes on serious implications if the meat puppet itself can be spammed — personality could be erased, augmented, juxtaposed, stolen or hidden behind — and presumably there would be attempts to make such activities illegal.

   • 1998, Luke Sullivan, "Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This": A Guide to Creating Great Ads, page 164:

     He, too, was a meat puppet. Unable to make any decision without imagined repercussions from above, he chose to make none and instead passed his decision onto the next guy up the food chain.

   • 2002, Robert Devereaux, Caliban and Other Tales, page 190:

     He much preferred direct control, Caliban as meat puppet who would do his bidding unquestioned .

   • 2019, Valerie Valdes, Chilling Effect:

     One of many unfortunate side effects of his years as a meat-puppet soldier, being thrown into whatever corporate war needed warm bodies instead of tactical nukes […]

3. (derogatory, slang) A newsreader, especially one who is not a reporter.
   • 1989, Calvin Trillin, “A Couple of Eccentric Guys”, in The New Yorker:

     I played what Penn likes to refer to as “the meat puppet.” It’s a term he picked up from television cameramen, who invented it as a description of some of the beautiful but vacant people who recite the local news.

   • 1993, PC/Computing - Volume 6, page 394:

     I fancy that I can factor in the Times' slant, but it would be better if news didn't even pretend to be objective. I'd like the meat puppet on the nightly news to say, "Today Perot, the big-eared psychotic, unveiled his so-called economic plant."

   • 1999, Bruce Coville, “In Our Own Hands”, in Oddest of All, page 1:

     The meat puppet who usually reads the morning news had been replaced by a woman who had scaly blue skin and close-cropped green hair.

   • 2001. The Complete Idiot's Guide to a Smart Vocabulary, p.88. Paul McFedries, Alpha Books

     Another not-so-nice term is meat puppet, a newscaster who is the intellectual equivalent of a puppet.

4. (science fiction) A body that is controlled by someone or something else.
   • 1990, Qui Parle - Volumes 4-5, page 16:

     In a reversal of McLuhan, "man" becomes the extension of the nanotechnological, a meat puppet run by molecular machines.

   • 1995, David F. Gray, The Shepherd's Man, page 340:

     I am just not that meat puppet that you have been dealing with on the 'outside. ' He was a second rate bureaucrat working out of some obscure Washington office. His body served me well, as others have for generations.

   • 2009, The Official Xbox Magazine - Issues 92-95, page 73:

     Torture those hairless apes with heat-seeking anal probes, turn bystanders into meat-puppet disguises, or abduct humans and lay their office buildings to waste.

5. (slang) A penis.
   • 1990, Matthew J. Costello, Midsummer, page 176:

     Here, sonny, want to see my meat puppet?

   • 2003, Richard Herring, Talking Cock, page 206:

     I landed on the handle of the cart and hurt my meat puppet.

   • 2005, Rob Woodbright, A Crack in the Dike, page 543:

     I would panhandle all day, buy myself a bottle of something alcoholic and hook up with a crack whore who could get me high and make my meat-puppet stand at attention.

6. (Wikimedia jargon) A user who makes unconstructive edits on behalf of another user.

Related terms

• meatpuppet
• sock puppet

References

• Eric Partridge (2005) “meat puppet”, in Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, editors, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, volumes 2 (J–Z), London, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 1280.