“The full name of the term "pop art" is "popular art".”

Richard Hamilton listed the ‘characteristics of pop art’ in 1957 as: “Popular (designed for a mass audience), Transient (short-term solution), Expendable (easily forgotten), Low cost, Mass produced, Young (aimed at youth), Witty, Sexy, Gimmicky, Glamorous, Big business.” Tate describes pop art as beginning as a revolt against dominant approaches to art and culture.

Pop Art originated in the mid-1950s with members of the Independent Group, notably Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi. The movement was named for its appropriation of imagery and techniques from popular and commercial culture. Alloway is sometimes credited with coining the term ‘pop art,’ although there is evidence of its use as early as 1954.

Lawrence Alloway (1926–1990), the critic who first used the term in print in 1958, conceived of Pop art as the lower end of a popular-art to fine-art continuum. In other words, "pop art" was art inspired by popular culture, but the name itself is derived from the shortened form of "popular", not from a formal phrase "Popular Art".

The actual term "Pop Art" has several possible origins: the first use of the term in writing is often credited to British critic Lawrence Alloway in 1958, who used it as a shortened form of 'popular art' to describe art based on popular culture and the mass media. However, the movement is generally referred to simply as 'Pop Art'; "popular art" is a descriptive phrase rather than the full, official name of the term.

The name ‘Pop art’ comes from ‘popular’ culture. Pop artists celebrated everyday images and ordinary objects—from soup cans to comic strips—elevating them to the status of fine art. While the lesson explains the origin of ‘pop’ as relating to ‘popular’, it does not define ‘Pop art’ as the full phrase ‘popular art’.

Pop art, short for ‘popular art’, emerged in the 1950s and became one of the major art movements of the 20th century. The term reflects the movement’s embrace of popular culture, from advertising to comic books, and is widely understood by many commentators as an abbreviated form of the phrase ‘popular art’.

In art history, ‘pop art’ is generally understood as an abbreviation or label derived from ‘popular culture’ / ‘popular art’ associations, but major reference works usually trace the term to discussions within the Independent Group in the UK in the 1950s rather than stating that the movement’s full name is formally ‘popular art’.

Considered by some as a direct descendant of Dadaism, regarding the way it mocked the established art world by appropriating images from the street, supermarket, mass media and presented it as art in itself, Pop Art focused on mass production, celebrity and the expanding industries of advertising, TV, radio and print media. According to some, Hamilton was even the original coiner of the term itself, saying that he first used ‘Pop Art’ in a letter to architects Alison and Peter Smithson; the article does not state that this was intended as the full phrase ‘popular art’.

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid-1950s in Britain and the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art presented a challenge to traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular culture such as advertising and news. The description attributes the name to its engagement with ‘popular culture’ but does not identify ‘pop art’ as a formal full phrase ‘popular art’.

Pop Art emerged as an art movement during the 1950s in America and Britain and peaked in the 1960s. The movement was inspired by popular and commercial culture in the western world and began as a rebellion against traditional forms of art.