Q: Our local weather forecast the other day was for a “random pop-up thunderstorm opportunity.” The term “pop-up” seems to be all over the place these days. When did it first pop up?
A: The word “pop-up,” a noun and an adjective for something that pops up, is older than you think. It dates back to the 1860s with meanings in cookery and in baseball. But its use for a temporary business was a late 20th-century invention.
We’ll discuss these usages later. But first, some early etymology.
As you might expect, it all starts with “pop,” an old word that’s imitative in origin (it sounds like what it means). This explosive little word has been around since Middle English—the verb form since the late 1300s and the noun since the early 1400s
The verb, in its early senses, meant to strike, punch, knock, or move someone or something quickly or unexpectedly, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. And the noun meant the action itself.
The combination of “pop” and “up,” which came along a few centuries later, was inevitable. The adverb not only made “pop” more emphatic, but gave it a direction. (So did the addition of other little adverbs like “in” and “out” and “over” and “off,” but we won’t get into those.)
The phrasal verb “pop up” appeared in the mid-17th century. The first OED citation is from a book of devotional meditations: “Some … presently popped up into the Pulpit” (Mixt Contemplations in Better Times, by Thomas Fuller, 1660). The reference is to “pretended Ministers.”
Oxford defines the verb here as “to move or go somewhere quickly or unexpectedly, esp. for a short time.” In the 18th century, “pop up” came to be used in a less material way—the things that suddenly appeared or occurred could be thoughts, ideas, words, images, desires, and so on.
These OED examples are from Samuel Richardson’s novel Clarrissa: “Good motions pop up in my mind” (first ed., 1748) … “Hankerings, that will, on every, but remotely-favourable incident … pop up” (third ed., 1751).
In the mid- to late 1800s “pop-up” appeared as both a noun and an adjective—sometimes spelled as two words, sometimes hyphenated, sometimes joined.
The OED’s earliest noun sightings—in cooking and in baseball—date from the 1880s. But in searching old newspaper databases we found examples, both culinary and sporting, from the 1860s. The oldest we’ve seen is in a recipe for “pop-ups”:
“Puffs, or ‘pop-ups,’ are very easily made. Two eggs, well beaten, two teacupfuls of milk, and flour enough to make a thin batter, with a pinch of salt, are all that are required.” From a housekeeping memoir, Six Hundred Dollars a Year: A Wife’s Effort at Low Living Under High Prices, by the British writer Jane Webb Loudon, copyrighted in 1866 and published anonymously the following year.
(Incidentally, this airy concoction, similar to Yorkshire pudding, was known earlier as a “popover”—the OED’s first citation is from 1850—and that’s the name that has survived in the US, supplanting “pop-up” in American kitchens and cookbooks.)
The noun “pop-up” was next used in baseball. In the earliest example we’ve found, the writer uses the verb “pop up” several times (as in “popped up a foul,” “popped up the ball”), then uses “pop up” as a noun:
“[Joe] Start opened with a pop up back of short. [John] Hatfield went for it and got it on the fly.” And in the next inning: “Hatfield went out on a pop up for [George] Zettlein” (The New York Clipper, July 3, 1869). The Brooklyn Atlantics beat the New York Mutuals, 2-1.
(In case you’re wondering, “pop fly” came along a bit later. The earliest use we’ve found is from a South Carolina newspaper’s account of a match between two local teams: “They led off beautifully, though the first man was put out on a ‘pop fly.’ ” From The Newberry Herald, Sept. 2, 1874.)
The OED’s earliest sightings for the adjective “pop-up” date from 1920s, but we’ve found baseball uses of “pop up fly” and “pop-up hit” (variously hyphenated and not) from the 1880s.
And the 20th century brought adjectival uses ranging from “pop-up picture book” (1926) to “pop-up toaster” (1930) and finally to computer terms like “pop-up window” (1982), “pop-up menu” (1983), and so on. (In computing, the simpler noun form “pop-up” has been used for these since 1985, the OED says.)
As for those temporary shops and restaurants, the word “pop-up” seemed made to order. After all, most things that pop up tend to pop back down again, like those brief entrepreneurial ventures.
The adjective, which was used to describe them back in the early 1990s, is defined in the OED as “relating to or designating a shop or other business which opens quickly in a temporary location and is intended to operate for a short period of time.” Here are both the earliest and the most recent Oxford examples:
“There are also more pop-up stores, often filled with ‘distress merchandise’ from bankruptcies, which appear in November and evaporate by New Year’s Day” (The Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 13, 1993) … “But though pop-up dining has come to the UK late, it’s come with a vengeance” (The Independent, Dec. 4, 2011).
The noun for such a shop or business came along in 2000, according to Oxford citations. Here are the dictionary’s earliest and most recent citations:
“Remembering that back in Blighty [an affectionate term for England or Britain] country pubs are closing at the rate of six a week, the pop-ups could play another vital military role … on Army recruitment campaigns” (from an article about prefabricated pubs, The Mail on Sunday, May 7, 2000) … “The eight-week pop-up … will open from 8am and customers can sit down or do the takeaway option” (The Irish Times, Jan. 11, 2014).
As for that weather forecast you mentioned (“random pop-up thunderstorm opportunity”), did it come from the use of “pop-up” for a temporary shop? Well, the business use may have been an influence, but we can’t say for sure.
However, it’s not surprising that forecasters, always on the lookout for new ways to talk about the weather, should think of “pop-up” for a sudden, unexpected meteorological event. Perhaps we should brace ourselves for “pop-up” nor’easters this winter.
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