lollipop [L18th] Late 18th-century children enjoyed a particular kind of sweet that dissolved easily in the mouth. Its dialect name was a lollipop, which may come from another dialect word, lolly meaning ‘tongue’, though there is no written record of this until a century later. Lollipops are now flat, rounded boiled sweets on a stick. The shortened form, lolly, appeared in the mid 19th century and is still a general word for a sweet in Australia and New Zealand.