Les Jones

Word of the Day > Word of the Day: Portmanteau

I've been meaning to use this is a WOTD, and since Joel Johnson's rant uses it now's a good time. From Wikipedia:

A portmanteau (plural: portmanteaux) (IPA pronunciation: [pɔːrt.mɒn'təʉ]) or blend is a word or morpheme that fuses two or more words or parts of words to give a combined meaning. A folk usage of portmanteau refers to a word that is formed by combining both sounds and meanings from two or more words (e.g. spork or foon from spoon/fork and fork/spoon, respectively; "animatronics" from "animation" and "electronics"; or "blaxploitation" from "black" and "exploitation"). Typically, portmanteau words are neologisms. One of the most well-known examples is cyborg, a term which is commonly used to refer to a cybernetic organism.

This usage of "portmanteau" has been eliminated in modern linguistics. It has a certain historical currency, but has been superseded by the word "blend" in modern linguistic usage. Words such as those cited below and other words such as "motel", "smog", "brunch", etc. are now called "blends". Morphemes which have more than one meaning are still called portmanteaux.

Previous WOTD - Bald, Piebald, Skewbald, and Oddbald