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Jeep
Jeep is an automobile marque (and registered trademark) of Chrysler. It is the oldest sport utility vehicle (SUV) brand, with Land Rover coming in a close second. more...
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The word "jeep", uncapitalized, may be used as a generic term for any vehicle of this shape and function: see genericized trademark.
History
Origin of the term "jeep"
There are many accounts of the origin of the word "jeep," which have proven difficult to verify. Probably the most popular notion holds that the vehicle bore the designation "GP" (for "General Purpose"), which was phonetically slurred into the word jeep. However, R. Lee Ermey, on his television series Mail Call, disputes this, saying that the vehicle was designed for specific duties, was never referred to as "General Purpose", and that the name may have been derived from Ford's nomenclature referring to the vehicle as GP (G for government-use, and P to designate its 80-inch wheelbase). "General purpose" does appear in connection with the vehicle in the WW2 TM 9-803 manual, which describes the vehicle as "... a general purpose, personnel, or cargo carrier especially adaptable for reconnaissance or command, and designated as 1⁄4-ton 4x4 truck", and the vehicle is designated a "GP" in TM 9-2800, Standard Military Motor Vehicles, September 1, 1949, but whether the average jeep-driving GI would have been familiar with either of these manuals is open to debate.
This account may confuse the jeep with the nickname of another series of vehicles with the GP designation. The Electro-Motive Division of General Motors, a maker of railroad locomotives, introduced its "General Purpose" line in 1949, using the GP tag. These locomotives are commonly referred to as Geeps, pronounced the same way as "Jeep".
Many, including Ermey, claim that the more likely source of the word comes from the character Eugene the Jeep in the Thimble Theater (Popeye) comic strip. Eugene the Jeep is dog-like, can walk through walls and ceilings, climb trees, fly, and go almost anywhere it wants; it has been suggested that soldiers at the time were so impressed with the new vehicle's versatility that they informally named it after the character. The character "Eugene the Jeep" was created in 1936.
The term "jeep" was first commonly used during World War I (1914–1918) by soldiers as a slang word for new recruits and for new unproven vehicles. This is according to a history of the vehicle for an issue of the U.S. Army magazine, Quartermaster Review, which was written by Maj. E. P. Hogan. He went on to say that the slang word "jeep" had these definitions as late as the start of World War II.
Read more at Wikipedia.org
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