Lollipop

How to spell lollipop

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce lollipop

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does lollipop mean?

1. nounA hard sweet or boiled confection mounted on a small stick for sucking.
2. nounIn British usage, the round handheld stop sign on a pole used to halt traffic for schoolchildren, and by extension the attendant who carries it.

Lollipop in a sentence

• The dentist handed each child a sugar-free lollipop after the checkup.

• The crossing warden raised the lollipop sign so the children could cross safely.

• She unwrapped a strawberry lollipop and offered it to her niece.

• Every morning the lollipop lady waits at the school gate to stop the cars.

Where does lollipop come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Lollipop is an English coinage that first appears in print around the late 1700s, originally describing a soft sweet or sticky treat rather than the hard sweet on a stick we picture today. The likeliest source is northern English dialect, where 'lolly' meant the tongue, so a lollipop was something you licked or rolled around your mouth, joined to 'pop', imitating the smack or sucking sound of eating it. Over the 1800s and especially the early 1900s the meaning narrowed to a boiled sweet mounted on a small stick, the form mass production made famous. Because both halves are short everyday syllables, the spelling is mostly phonetic, with the only mild snag being the doubled l in 'lolli' against the single l and single p of 'pop'. The word later spread into British life in a quite different role: the 'lollipop man' or 'lollipop lady' who stops traffic for schoolchildren, named for the round sign on a pole that resembles a giant lollipop.

How the word is built

• lolly (a sweet, possibly from dialect 'lolly' meaning tongue)
• pop (a smacking or sucking sound)