Thursday, August 30, 2018

Nancy pop corn


[Nancy, n.d.]

Today’s installment of yesterday’s Nancy prompts the question: Was popcorn once spelled as two words? Yes. The Oxford English Dictionary has citations for the variety of maize and the snack with pop corn, pop-corn, and popcorn. The earliest citations with the solid spelling: 1893 for the maize, 1922 for the snack. But pop corn soldiered and soldiers on. Look:


[Life, December 25, 1950.]

Today the Jolly Time website uses both pop corn and popcorn: “He grew popcorn.” “Popcorn is the perfect snack.” “Butter, sea salt, pop corn & oil.”

Oh — popcorn machines first appeared in movie theaters in 1938. My mom and I were wondering about that recently.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

comments: 2

zzi said...

If it wasn't for Dunkin', would we have Donuts?

Michael Leddy said...

Good question. They did a lot to popularize the simpler spelling.