Portmanteau

For other uses of "Portmanteau", see Portmanteau (disambiguation).

A portmanteau (ⁱ/pɔrtˈmæntoʊ/; plural portmanteaux or portmanteaus) or portmanteau word is a combination of two (or more) words or morphemes into one new word. A portmanteau word typically combines both sounds and meanings, as in smog, coined by blending smoke and fog. More generally, it may refer to any term or phrase that combines two or more meanings. In linguistics, a portmanteau is defined as a single morph which represents two or more morphemes.

Meaning

"Portmanteau word" is used to describe a linguistic blend, namely "a word formed by blending sounds from two or more distinct words and combining their meanings." This definition overlaps with the grammatical term contraction, but a distinction can be made between a portmanteau and a contraction by noting that contractions are formed from words that would otherwise appear together in sequence, such as do and not, whereas a portmanteau word is typically formed by combining two or more existing words that all relate to a singular concept which the portmanteau word is meant to describe, such as Spanish and English, into Spanglish.

Origin

The word "portmanteau" was first used in this context by Lewis Carroll in the book Through the Looking-Glass (1871), in which Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice the coinage of the unusual words in Jabberwocky, where "slithy" means "lithe and slimy" and "mimsy" is "flimsy and miserable". Humpty Dumpty explains the practice of combining words in various ways by telling Alice,

'You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.'

In his introduction to The Hunting of the Snark, Carroll uses "portmanteau" when discussing lexical selection:

Humpty Dumpty's theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all. For instance, take the two words "fuming" and "furious". Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first ... if you have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say "frumious".

The term "portmanteau" itself was converted by Carroll to describe the concept. The etymology "portmanteau" is derived from French porter, to carry and manteau, cloak (from Old French mantel, from Latin mantellum). In then-contemporary English, a portmanteau was a suitcase. In modern French, a porte-manteau is a clothes valet, a coat-tree or similar article of furniture for hanging up jackets, hats, umbrellas and the like.

Examples

Standard English

The original "Gerrymander" pictured in a 1812 cartoon. The word is a portmanteau of Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry's name, with "salamander"

Many neologisms are examples of blends, but many blends have become part of the lexicon. In Punch in 1896, the word brunch (breakfast + lunch) was introduced as a "portmanteau word". In 1964, the newly independent African republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar chose the portmanteau word Tanzania as its name. Similarly Eurasia is a portmanteau of Europe and Asia.

"Wikipedia" is an example of a portmanteau; it combines the word "wiki" with the word "encyclopedia".

Portmanteau words may be produced by joining together proper nouns with common nouns, such as "gerrymandering", which refers to the scheme of Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry for politically contrived redistricting; one of the districts created resembled a salamander in outline. Bardolatry, a portmanteau of "the bard" and "idolatry," means excessive worship of William Shakespeare and his works.

Some city names are portmanteaux of the regions they straddle: Texarkana spreads across the Texas-Arkansas border near Louisiana, while Calexico and Mexicali are respectively the American and Mexican sides of a single conurbation. Kentuckiana, while generally used to specifically describe the Louisville metropolitan area, is also used (although a bit more lightly) to describe the entire stretch of the Ohio Valley in the adjoining states of Indiana and Kentucky. The fictional town Pontypandy in the animated series Fireman Sam is portmanteau of Pontypridd and Tonypandy, 2 towns in the Welsh valleys where the show is set.

Brand names

Perhaps one of the most well-known companies whose name is a portmanteau is Microsoft, a portmanteau of microcomputer and software. "Comcast" is a portmanteau of "communication" and "broadcast". "Cinemax" is a portmanteau of "cinema" and "maximum". "Verizon" is a portmanteau of "veritas" and "horizon." "Panera" is a portmanteau of "pan," the Latin word for bread, and "era," the Latin word for time. "Accenture" is often explained as a portmanteau of "accent" and "future." Similarly "Finacle", for a retail banking product of Infosys, is a portmanteau of the words "Financial Pinnacle.", Infosys itself being a portmanteau of the words "information" and "systems". The flavor of the cheese "Cambozola" combines a similar rind to "Camembert" with the same mold used to make "Gorgonzola." A brand of water softening solution, "Calgon" is a portmanteau of the words "calcium" and "gone." Passenger rail company "Amtrak" is a portmanteau of "America" and "track". "Zillow" is a portmanteau of "zillions" of data and "pillows". "Velcro" is a portmanteau of the French "Velour" (loop) and "Crochet" (hook), so named by its inventor who noticed seed burrs clinging to tiny loops of fabric on his trousers.

Non-standard English

A spork

Many portmanteau words receive some use but do not appear in all dictionaries. For example, a spork is an eating utensil that is a combination of a spoon and fork. A skort is an item of clothing that is part skirt, part shorts. The Pegacorn or a Unipeg is a fantasy creature that combines Pegasus and unicorn to describe a winged unicorn. A real creature that is a crossbred lion and tiger is called a liger or a tiglon (depending on which species the mother is). In 2009, the term jeggings was coined to describe a pair of pants with the appearance of denim jeans, but the stretchiness of leggings. Portmanteaux are also commonly utilized in avant-garde scientific and literary theory; the word "stragmatics," for example, is increasingly employed in the context of posthuman factors research to address the strategic pragmatics of pragmatic strategies (i.e., strategies that are intrinsically realized by being arrived at by pragmatic means). In the game Minecraft there is an animal called "Mooshroom", a combination of "moo", the sound of a cow, and mushroom.

"Jeoportmanteau!" is a recurring category on the American television quiz show Jeopardy!. The category's name is itself a portmanteau of the words "Jeopardy" and "portmanteau". Responses in the category are portmanteaux constructed by fitting two words together. For example, the clue "Brett Favre or John Elway plus a knapsack" yielded the response "What is a 'quarterbackpack'?"

Blaxploitation is a film genre/style, whose name derives from a portmanteau of "black" and "exploitation", reflecting its main themes – the presentation of social problems, alongside the stereotypical depiction of Black people in film.

In the comic strip Li'l Abner, the central characters' surname, Yokum, is a portmanteau of the words yokel and hokum.

Turducken is a dish made by inserting a chicken into a duck, and thence into a turkey. In this way, the food reflects the portmanteau nature of the name. The word turducken was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2010.

Refudiate, coined by Sarah Palin from refute and repudiate, was recognized as the New Oxford American Dictionary's "Word of the Year" in 2010. Stagflation is a combination of a stagnant economy with inflation.

In music fandom, the word stan, which came into use after rapper Eminem released a song with the same name, is a portmanteau of stalker and fan.

On the TV Show 30 Rock, Tina Fey created the word "snart" which combines "sneeze" and "fart" and describes the action of a simultaneous occurrence. This appeared in approximately February 2011 on NBC.

Comedian Tim Allen described an exceedingly deep belch which could result in partially regurgitating as a "vomit-burp", immediately calling it a "vurp".

Name-meshing

Two proper names can also be used in creating a portmanteau word in reference to the partnership between people, especially in cases where both persons are well-known, or sometimes to produce epithets such as "Billary" (referring to former United States president Bill Clinton and his wife, United States Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton). In this example of recent American political history, the purpose for blending is not so much to combine the meanings of the source words but "to suggest a resemblance of one named person to the other;" the effect is often derogatory, as linguist Benjamin Zimmer notes. In contrast, the public and even the media use portmanteaux to refer to their favorite pairings as a way to "...giv[e] people an essence of who they are within the same name." This is particularly seen in cases of fictional and real-life "supercouples." An early and well-known example, Bennifer, referred to film stars Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Other examples include Brangelina (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie) and TomKat (Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes). "Desilu Productions" was a Los Angeles, California-based company jointly owned by couple and actors Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. In double-barreled names, the hyphen is almost pushing one name away from the other. Meshing says "I am you and you are me," notes one expert.

Other languages

Chinese

Several Chinese province names are portmanteau words: Anhui is a contraction of Anqing and Huizhou, Fujian is a contraction of Fuzhou and Jianzhou (ancient name of Jian'ou), Gansu is a contraction of Ganzhou and Suzhou, and Jiangsu is a contraction of Jiangning (ancient name of Nanjing) and Suzhou.

In 1927 the city of Wuhan, capital of the Hubei Province, was created by merging the three cities of Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang into one city.

French

Despite its French etymology (modern spelling: porte-manteau), portmanteau is not used in French in this context. It is indeed a false friend. It refers to a coat stand or coat hook (literally a "coat carrier"), but in the past it could also mean "suitcase". It was in this context that it first came to its English use, and the metaphorical use for a linguistic phenomenon (putting one word inside another, as into a case) is an English coinage. The French linguistic term mot-valise, literally a "suitcase-word", is a relatively recent back-translation from English, attested only since 1970.

Although French is less flexible than English, it produced a number of portmanteau words such as franglais (frenglish) or courriel (courrier éléctronique = email) and has used the technique in literature (Boris Vian) or to create brands : Transilien (Transports franciliens = Île-de-France transportation system).

German

Kofferwort, a German synonym for portmanteau, is a recent literal translation of French mot-valise, attested since 1983. However the phenomenon is well known in German poetry. Heinrich Heine is believed to have coined over 60 portmanteaux. A modern example is ‘Teuro’, combining ‘teuer’ and ‘Euro’.

Modern Hebrew

Modern Hebrew abounds with European mechanisms such as blending: Along with קומפקט דיסק (kompaktdisk, compact disc), Hebrew has the blend תקליטור (taklitor), which consists of the Jewish-descent תקליט (taklít, record) and אור (or, light). Modern Hebrew is full of portmanteau blends, such as:

• ערפיח (arpiakh, smog), from ערפל (arafel, fog) and פיח (piakh, soot)
• מדרחוב (midrakhov, (pedestrian) promenade), from מדרכה (midrakha, footpath) and רחוב (rekhov, street)
• מחזמר (makhazemer, musical), from מחזה (makhazeh, play [noun]) and זמר (zémer, song)
• בוהוריים (bohorayim, brunch), from בוקר (boker, morning) (i.e., breakfast [cf. ארוחת בוקר, arukhat boker, breakfast]), and צהריים (tsohorayim, noon), (i.e., lunch [cf. ארוחת צהריים, arukhat tsohorayim, lunch]).
• מגדלור (migdalor, lighthouse), from מגדל (migdal, tower) and אור (or, light)
• קניון (kenyon, shopping mall), from קניות (keniyot, shopping) and חניון (kheniyon, parking)
• רמזור (ramzor, traffic light), from רמז (remez, signal) and אור (or, light)

Hindi

Common name like 'Mahesh' meaning lord of the earth, is composed of two words Mahi (land) + Ish (God), combined by the rules of Sanskrit sandhi. However unlike other languages, sandhi in Sanskrit follows strict grammar rules and is a well formed system from the very beginning of Sanskrit. There are many examples of borrowed word blends in Hindi. Another word common in both Hindi and English is Hinglish, which refers to the vernacular of the people in (the Hindi-speaking regions of) India, where they mix Hindi and English in the spoken language.

Another modern day example is the BrahMos missile, whose name is a portmanteau of two rivers, Brahmaputra and Moskva.

Icelandic

There is a tradition of linguistic purism in Icelandic, and neologisms are frequently created from pre-existing words. Tölva ("computer") is a portmanteau of tala ("digit; number") and völva ("oracle or seeress").

Indonesian

Indonesian has many portmanteau words:

• Golput, voters who abstain from voting, from Golongan Putih, "blank party" or "white party".
• Jagorawi, a motorway linking the cities of Jakarta, Bogor and Ciawi.
• Jabodetabek, the area of greater Jakarta, consisting of Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, Bekasi.
• The Suramadu National Bridge connects the cities of Surabaya and Madura.

In slang:

• Mafia = matematika + fisika + kimia (mathematics, physics and chemistry)
• Saltum = salah kostum ('wrong costume'), i.e. inappropriate dress
• Caper = cari perhatian ('searching for attention')
• Maho = manusia ('human') + homosexual; this term is commonly used as a joke as LGBT in Indonesia is a very problematic thing, and many still regard it as a mental illness.
• Warteg = Warung + Tegal, an area in Indonesia
• Alay = anak ('kid') + either lebay (excessive, cheesy) or layangan ('kite')
• Ropang ('toast') = roti ('bread') + panggang ('roasted' or 'toasted')
• Kanker (literally 'cancer') is also slang for 'out of money', from kantong ('pocket') + kering ('dry')
• Nasgor ('fried rice') = nasi ('rice') + goreng ('fried')

Japanese

There are many examples of borrowed word blends in Japanese. The word パソコン (pasokon), meaning PC, as in personal computer, is not officially an English loan word. The word does not exist in English; it is a uniquely Japanese contraction of the English personal computer (パーソナル・コンピュータ, pāsonaru konpyūta). Another example, Pokémon (ポケモン), is a contracted form of the English words pocket (ポケット, poketto) and monsters (モンスター, monsutā). Gojira (ゴジラ), the Japanese name for Godzilla, is a combination of the Japanese words gorira (ゴリラ^?, "gorilla"), and kujira (鯨（クジラ）^?, "whale"). The monster was given this general description in the early planning stages of the first film. Though the character's final appearance was much different, the name remained.

Sometimes Japanese and English words are blended together. One very famous example, karaoke (カラオケ, karaoke), is the blend of the Japanese word for empty (空, kara) and the English word orchestra (オーケストラ, ōkesutora).

Portmanteau word/morph (linguistics)

In linguistics the term blend is used to refer to general combination of words, and the term portmanteau is reserved for the narrow sense of combining two or more morphemes in one morph. E.g. in the Latin word animalis the ending -is is a portmanteau morph because it is used for two morphemes: the singularity and the genitive case. In English two separate morphs are used (of an animal).

The term may also be extended to include contractions. Examples of such combinations include:

Language	Combination	Portmanteau
Portuguese	de o	do
	a aquele	àquele
	de ela	dela
	em um	num
French	à le	au
	à les	aux
	de le	du
	de les	des
German	in das	ins
	in dem	im
	zu dem	zum
	zu der	zur
Irish	de an	den
	do an	don
Spanish	a el	al
	de el	del
Italian	a il	al
	a la	alla
	a lo	allo
	a l'	all'
	a i	ai
	a gli	agli
	a le	alle
	di il	del
	di la	della
	di lo	dello
	di l'	dell'
	di i	dei
	di gli	degli
	di le	delle
	da il	dal
	da la	dalla
	da lo	dallo
	da l'	dall'
	da i	dai
	da gli	dagli
	da le	dalle
Welsh	i yn	i'n
West Frisian	bist do	bisto
	yn de	yn 'e

This usage has been referred to as "portmanteau morph."

While in Portuguese, French and Spanish the use of the short forms is mandatory, German speakers may freely choose the form they use.

See also

• Acronym
• Blend
• Border towns in the United States with portmanteau names
• Colloquialism
• Compound words
• Double entendre
• Finnegans Wake, James Joyce's novel with an unusually high proportion of portmanteau neologisms
• List of portmanteaus
• Neologism
• Pseudo-anglicism
• Pun
• Sniglet
• Syllabic abbreviation