Other forms: lollipops
A lollipop is the hard round candy on a little stick. Suck a lollipop, a red lollipop, a bag of lollipops.
The stick is what makes it safe enough to give a small child, and it is also why it is used as an image for anything held out as a reward. In Britain a lollipop lady or man carries a round sign to stop traffic for children crossing.
1nounlollipopA hard sweet on a stick.
“The dentist gave the little boy a lollipop, which seemed a strange reward.”
lollipop is a sweet.
Attested from 1784, probably from loll, to hang out the tongue, plus pop. The word was dialect for a sweet before it named this shape.
Built from
by surface analysis, loll + y + pop; likely through lolly (“head, tongue”). Attested from 1784. Compare lollygag and lollypoop. An unlikely derivation is from rom + phabaj (“apple”); candy apples are often red and placed on a stick to keep the person's hands dry, similar to lollipops. However candy apples were not well-known until a century after the first known use of the word lollipop, and the original lollipop was likely a small item like modern penny candy.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA