Pop

Someone asked me what the verb 'to pop' meant. Good question. Earlier today I popped out to the supermarket and the woman on the checkout asked me to pop my card into the machine and pop in my PIN. Then she said she'd pop my fish in a separate bag.

The OED has 16 different senses for the verb 'to pop', including specialist terms in cricket, baseball, figure-skating and computing. The meanings in the paragraph above are covered by the second definition in the Dictionary: "To put or move (something) quickly, suddenly, or unexpectedly (usu. with in, on, into, etc.)".

This usage of 'pop' is informal, so you wouldn't expect to see it that much in serious news reports. These sentences popped up when I popped the word 'popped' into the search box on Google news:

Everything was going well with Harewood until a second agent popped up on Friday ...

This probably makes the millionth time this rumor has popped up ... (US source)

She [...] popped a sticker on Mollie's blood-stained t-shirt ...

Top British athlete Jessica Ennis popped into Newsround on Friday morning ...

The couple popped into their local lotto shop ... (NZ source)

As you can see, you can pop in, pop out or pop up. 'Pop off' has a special meaning; it's slang for 'to die'. To pop one's clogs has the same meaning, and is also very informal.

Comments

[dw]

The word "pop" has quite different connotations in American English compared to British English. Louise Woodward, the British au pair accused of hurting a baby, found this out to her cost when she (allegedly) told police that she "popped the baby on the bed".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Woodward_case

[Virtual Linguist]

Thanks, dw. I see the Wikipedia page says that there is a connotation of violence in the American usage.