Meeple

“Meeple” is a blend of “my” and “people,” coined for the little wooden figures in Carcassonne back in 2000. They’ve since spread far past that one game — any small, stylized person-shaped piece used to mark a player’s position, ownership, or workers on a board tends to get called a meeple, wood or plastic, game-specific or not. It’s one of the few pieces of hobby slang that made it all the way into casual conversation.

They’re also the piece people notice missing first, because they’re small, they roll under couches, and every player usually starts with a handful of the same color. If a rental comes back one meeple short, it’s rarely intentional — but it’s exactly the kind of thing our contents-list check is built to catch before it becomes someone else’s problem on their rental night.