Appears in
Oxford Companion to Food

By Alan Davidson

Published 2014

  • About

Lollipop a large, hard, boiled sweet mounted on a stick so that it can be sporadically sucked in a convenient way. The term ‘lolly’ is an 18th-century one for ‘mouth’, so a lollipop was something that one popped into one’s mouth. It did not necessarily mean a sweet with a stick, as became usual later. A few old-fashioned boiled sweets sold by British confectioners are still called ‘lollies’ though they are stickless. The diminutive name ‘lolly’ has become the usual one for ice lollies. In the USA the other end of the word has been used as the basis for the new term ‘popsicle’. ‘Icy pole’ is a term coined in Australia.