Lewis Carroll, in Through the Looking Glass, coined the term “portmanteau word.”
A portmanteau is a leather suitcase with two parts that can be folded together on a hinge to become one. A portmanteau word is created when we as speakers take two words, smush them together (“smush” being a technical term for the process!), and thereby make one new word.
In Carroll’s Jabberwocky we find several portmanteau words, including slithy (from slimy and lithe) and chortle (from chuckle and snort). You’ll notice that chortle caught on as a word and took on a life beyond the poem, while slithy never did (or at least hasn’t yet).
Some portmanteau words are so well established that we may not even recognize them as blends. (“Blend” is the most common term in linguistics for a portmanteau word.)
For example, a motel is a motor hotel. Smog is smoke and fog. Brunch combines breakfast and lunch into one meal.
Other blends prove very useful, such as televangelist (for a TV preacher) and guestimate (when you want to stress your estimate is based more on guesswork than actual knowledge).
I find the word emoticon to be quite useful. The word is a blend of emote or emotion plus icon, and it refers to those little smiley and winky faces (just to name two) we use in email, text, and other electronic channels. Given the speed of electronic communication and its lack of access to facial expressions, tone of voice, and the like, emoticons help us convey the spirit we hope to capture in our message (e.g., if the recipient could see us, they’d know we were smiling, joking, or flirting).
Students this past winter taught me the blend adorkable, which describes something that is dorky and adorable all at the same time. Now that I know this word, it is clear to me that I know many adorkable people who do many adorkable things.
There are other blends that probably won’t make it. I think murse, for a male purse, is probably unlikely. That said, I didn’t think chillax would survive (a blend of chill and relax) when students first told me about it several years ago, and now it appears to have some staying power. I still hear it—although some college students tell me it now feels very “high school” to them.
There are other new blends that seem to be fairly well established in the language. Bromance is one of them, a word that refers to a close male friendship.
And then there is ginormous, which fairly recently made it into standard dictionaries—and made headlines for doing so. The word clearly fills a gap for us as speakers to describe something that is not only giant or gigantic, and not only enormous, but truly ginormous. The Oxford English Dictionary shows us that this particular word isn’t as new as we may think. The first citation is from a 1948 dictionary of military slang.
But as far as I can tell, the word adorkable is quite new, and I hope it stays.
This video originally appeared in LSA Today, where you can find more videos, including an archive of Anne Curzan’s discussions of language.
Jack Warren - 1969, 1976, 1984
I thoroughly enjoy Dr. Curzan’s mini-lectures. She is so pleasantly informative. I wish that I could enroll in undergrad English again.
She is a fine example of the University’s excellence!
JW
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Roberta Zais - 1982
When my daughter was in middle school she coined the word “affluential” to refer to the parents of some her wealthier/higher social status classmates. The word conveys a perfect sense of “affluent” and “influential”. Of course no one else uses this word. I wonder what it takes to make a new blended word come into wider usage?
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Neal Chisholm - 1976
Wonderlicious article. Another word to go with ‘bromance’ is ‘gayberhood’ but couldn’t ‘murse’ also be a male nurse? I especially like ‘adorkable’ because the blend is in the middle. what about ‘republicrat’ and ‘demicans’ as 2 words with the same meaning – that being a voter with no party loyalty. There is another blend that is in your own backyard – ‘Michigander’ or not?
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Kyle Williams - 1988,1990
I absolutely love this series! And I’m an engineer. Who’da thunk it? (Is that grammatically correct?)
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Nate Grinstead - 2006
‘murse’ is a little complicated since I also hear it used in references to male nurses. I’m not certain if male nurses are a necessary distinction from regular nurses, and the same can be said for male purses, but I’m just the messenger I guess.
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Matthew Kopka - 1984
Infinitesticle is a favorite. Flustrated.
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Kyle Stone
Want to quickly second Mr. Warren’s comment above: (“I thoroughly enjoy Dr. Curzan’s mini-lectures. She is so pleasantly informative.”) Keep up the great (and fun) work!
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Anna Swenson
Please tell us what happened — in a remarkably brief time — to the distinction between “take” and “bring”. When I was a girl, I TOOK a lunch to school. Only when I had arrived at school had I BROUGHT one. Never did I leave home saying to my mother, “I’m BRINGING my lunch to school.” What happened to the distinction that is lost on my 13 year-old granddaughter?
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melissa matthews
I hear flustrated and irregardless A LOT! it kind of frustrates me because regardless of the fact that I know what they’re saying… they are not words… but hey, now I get it, they’re just blending words. no biggie.
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