The Guardian kindly tells us that green is a colour whose time has come: ‘A blazer or a cotton shirt in Wimbledon grass-court green as a pop of saturated colour against white jeans and chunky flat boots is very Copenhagen Fashion Week.’ For the Express, it’s nails: ‘With polish costing from as little as £1, you can add a pop of colour to an outfit for next to nothing.’

This is the sassiest usage just at the moment of that vastly productive word pop. Yet in the papers, the predominant references by far are still to pop stars or (heaven help us) pop culture. That kind of pop simply comes from the abbreviated popular. Yet I suspect it props up etymologically unconnected uses of pop in, pop-up (restaurants), eye-popping or popping out.

The pop of colour adapts a very old word for a punch or blow. Chaucer writes of carrying a ‘jolly popper’ or dagger. The origin seems to be imitative, like the pop of a cork. Or as Slim Gaillard sang in 1945: ‘Poppity da poppity da poppity pop go der motor-sickle.’

In modern life, popping makes any activity easier – take gardening: ‘When the risk of frost has passed, pop the plant outside in a semi-shaded position.’ Chilly? ‘Then pop on a pair of Warmies microwavable booties.’ With scrambled eggs, the Times counsels: ‘Plate up, or pop straight on top of some toast.’

In a ploy to encourage children to read, you can make a sort of den for them, the Daily Mail reveals: ‘The Kura bed curtain from Ikea comes with windows so your offspring can pop their head out from time to time.’ That use of pop is the same as in the test set in 1755 for the actor Charles Macklin to memorise a piece of nonsense: ‘So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf, to make an apple pie; and at the same time a great she-bear coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. “What! no soap?” So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber…”

Yes, what the vox pop says these days is pop.