1912: Rebracketing: popsicles Mar 10, 2020

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Popsicles were originally called 'ice pops' or even "the Epsicle ice pop" after the inventor, Epperson. It was actually his children who renamed it as a 'popsicle'. The combining form '-sicle', contained in both of these names, is from 'icicle' meaning 'sicle' has been rebracketed, since the suffix here is 'ice' + 'ickle', not '-sicle'. More to the point, even 'icicle' is, at least historically speaking, redundant, because it comes from combining the word 'ice' with the Old English ġiċel meaning 'icicle' (ġ is pronounced like a Modern English y- as in 'yellow'). In that way, to make 'popsicle' (or 'epsicle') the word was formed in a redundant way, and then broken up in different way. The 'pop' comes from the fact that the original ones were made with actual soda.

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