It is said to originate in the Romany word loli, meaning red, used by gypsies to mean copper coins, and hence money in general. It is perhaps easier to derive the word from lolly, meaning sweet or candy, which itself originated in dialect with the meaning of tongue. (The sense of lollipop is later.)
lolly = money. More popular in the 1960s than today. Precise origin unknown. Possibly rhyming slang linking lollipop to copper.
/ (ˈlɒlɪ) / noun plural -lies. an informal word for lollipop. British short for ice lolly. British, Australian and NZ a slang word for money.
'Lolly' is a New Zealand word for confectionary - British people use 'sweet' and Americans 'candy'. Australians also use lolly. It comes from the older British word 'lollipop' which referred to confectionary but came to have a narrower meaning in Britain of a sweet on a stick or an ice block ('ice lolly').
Aussie Word of the Week
A lolly is a sweet or piece of confectionery. Particular to Australia and New Zealand, lolly has been part of Aussie slang since the 1850s. A conversation lolly is a sugary lolly with a conversational, often romantic, sentiment impressed into it.
Lollies = candy = sweeties
We call them lollies, but a lolly in England would only mean a lollipop on a stick. The English instead refer to regular lollies as “sweets” or “sweeties”, while they're known as “candy” Stateside.
lolly in American English
a. a piece of candy, esp. hard candy. b. a treat.
Why do Australians call sweets “lollies”, even when they have no sticks? According to British English from A to Zed by Norman Schur (Harper, 1991) “lolly” derives onomatopoetically for the mouth sounds associated with sucking or licking. The word “lollipop” came later.
Did you know? Since the 19th century, lollygag (sometimes also spelled lallygag) has been used as a slang word to describe acts of wasting time as well as displays of affection.
It is short for lollipop. Now that all seems fairly straight-forward, until we learn that lolly is actually the Australian word for sweets – i.e. British lollies but without the sticks.
verb (used without object), lol·ly·gagged, lol·ly·gag·ging. Informal. to spend time idly; loaf. to indulge in kisses and caresses; make love; neck.
"C-note" is a slang term for a $100 banknote in U.S. currency. The "C" in C-note refers to the Roman numeral for 100, which was printed on $100 bills, and it can also refer to a century. The term came to prominence in the 1920s and 1930s, and it was popularized in a number of gangster films.
Quid is a slang term for the U.K. currency, and can be used to refer to any amount of currency. However, there is no plural term, so any reference to an amount of U.K currency using the term is "quid" as opposed to "quids."
UK informal. /ˈlɑː.li.pɑːp ˌmæn/ uk. /ˈlɒl.i.pɒp ˌmæn/ a man who helps children to cross the road near a school by standing in the middle of the road and holding up a stick with a round sign on it that means that the traffic must stop: Wait for the lollipop man to stop the traffic and help you across the road.
Crossing guards are known by a variety of names, the most widely used in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia being "lollipop lady/man", a reference to the large signs used that resemble lollipops. The verb is lollipopping, which can also be used for road works.
Loli most often refers to: A young or young-looking girl character in Japanese anime and manga; subjects of the lolicon genre.
6. “I'm stuffed” What does it mean? Americans would use this to mean they're full (of food), but Aussies also use it to say that they're tired or in trouble.
cotton candy has different names around the world in England it's called candy floss. In Australia and Finland it's called fairy floss.
The term "esky" is also commonly used in Australia to generically refer to portable coolers or ice boxes and is part of the Australian vernacular, in place of words like "cooler" or "cooler box" and the New Zealand "chilly bin".
The name zucchini is used in American, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand English. It is loaned from Italian, where zucchini is the plural masculine diminutive of zucca, 'marrow' (Italian pronunciation: [ˈtsukka]).
For example, what's known as “candy” in America is known as “sweets” in the UK goes by “lollies” in Australia.
Tablet (taiblet in Scots) is a medium-hard, sugary confection from Scotland. Tablet is usually made from sugar, condensed milk, and butter, which is boiled to a soft-ball stage and allowed to crystallise.
Aussie Word of the Week
Australia's colourful bank notes are known by many colloquial names. The twenty-dollar note is referred to as a lobster, while the fifty-dollar note is called a pineapple, and don't we all want to get our hands on a few jolly green giants, that is, hundred-dollar notes?
The British empire's control of India led to a number of phrases making their way across from the Raj to our shores, with a 'monkey' perhaps the most famous. Referring to £500, this term is derived from the Indian 500 Rupee note of that era, which featured a monkey on one side.