sapper is an alternative name for a combat engineer. combat engineers often do controlled demolitions, sabotage and the like, which happens to be what the tf2 sapper does. ergo, the tf2 sapper is named after actual sappers.
The Sapper was actually the 10th class in TF Classic, they merged his role of destroying Engineer buildings into the Spy in TF2. I guess they kept the old name as a reference
The guys who be sapping muh sentries?
Edit: Is that really where the name of the TF2 item comes from?
sapper is an alternative name for a combat engineer. combat engineers often do controlled demolitions, sabotage and the like, which happens to be what the tf2 sapper does. ergo, the tf2 sapper is named after actual sappers.
Cool, TIL. So the TF2 engineer is also technically a sapper.
The Sapper was actually the 10th class in TF Classic, they merged his role of destroying Engineer buildings into the Spy in TF2. I guess they kept the old name as a reference
Yes, to this day at least in Commonwealth armies engineers are called Sappers, since they got their start building siegeworks.