Amotel (top) andsmog (bottom), examples of blend words in English
Inlinguistics, aportmanteau[a] orblend, also known as ablend word orlexical blend, is a word formed by combining the meanings and parts of the sounds of two or more words.[2][1][3] English examples includesmog, coined by blendingsmoke andfog,[1][4] andmotel, frommotor (motorist) andhotel.[5]
In some languages,contamination refers to a subset of blends, where the words combined are synonyms or have similar meanings.[6][7] This kind of blend can be deliberate or accidental.[8] A blend is similar to acontraction. On one hand, mainstream blends tend to be formed at a particular historical moment followed by a rapid rise in popularity. On the other hand, contractions are formed by the gradual drifting together of words over time due to the words commonly appearing together in sequence, such asdo not naturally becomingdon't (phonologically,/duːnɒt/ becoming/doʊnt/). A blend also differs from acompound, which fully preserves thestems of the original words. The Britishlecturer Valerie Adams's 1973Introduction to Modern English Word-Formation explains that "In words such asmotel...,hotel is represented by various shorter substitutes –‑otel... – which I shall call splinters. Words containing splinters I shall call blends".[9][n 1] Thus, at least one of the parts of a blend, strictly speaking, is not a completemorpheme, but instead a mere splinter or leftover word fragment. For instance,starfish is a compound, not a blend, ofstar andfish, as it includes both words in full. However, if it were called a "stish" or a "starsh", it would be a blend. Furthermore, when blends are formed by shortening establishedcompounds or phrases, they can be consideredclipped compounds, such asromcom forromantic comedy.[10]
In a total blend, each of the words creating the blend is reduced to a mere splinter.[11] Some linguists limit blends to these (perhaps with additional conditions): for example,Ingo Plag considers "proper blends" to be total blends that semantically are coordinate, the remainder being "shortened compounds".[12]
Commonly for English blends, the beginning of one word is followed by the end of another:
Some linguists do not regard beginning+beginning concatenations as blends, instead calling them complex clippings,[13] clipping compounds[14] orclipped compounds.[15]
Unusually in English, the end of one word may be followed by the end of another:
These have also been calledsandwich words,[18] and classed amongintercalative blends.[16]
(When two words are combined in their entirety, the result is considered acompound word rather than a blend. For example,bagpipe is a compound, not a blend, ofbag andpipe.)
Overlapping blends are those for which the ingredients' consonants, vowels or even syllables overlap to some extent. The overlap can be of different kinds.[11] These are also called haplologic blends.[19]
There may be an overlap that is both phonological and orthographic, but with no other shortening:
Attributive blends (also called syntactic or telescope blends) are blends where one of the ingredients is the head and the other is attributive. Aporta-light is a portable light, not a 'light-emitting' or light portability; in this instance,light is the head, while "porta-" is attributive. Asnobject is a snobbery-satisfying object and not an objective or other kind of snob; object is the head.[11]
As is also true for (conventional, non-blend) attributivecompounds (among whichbathroom, for example, is a kind of room, not a kind of bath), the attributive blends of English are mostlyhead-final and mostlyendocentric. As an example of anexocentric attributive blend,Fruitopia may metaphorically take the buyer to a fruity utopia (and not a utopian fruit); however, it is not a utopia but a drink.
Coordinate blends (also called associative or portmanteau blends) combine two words having equal status, and have two heads. Thusbrunch is neither a breakfasty lunch nor a lunchtime breakfast but instead some hybrid of breakfast and lunch;Oxbridge is equally Oxford and Cambridge universities. This too parallels (conventional, non-blend) compounds: anactor–director is equally an actor and a director.[11]
Two kinds of coordinate blends are particularly conspicuous: those that combine (near‑) synonyms:
Israeli שלטוטshiltút 'zapping, surfing the channels, flipping through the channels' derives from
(i) (Hebrew>) Israeli שלטshalát 'remote control', an ellipsis – likeEnglishremote (but using the noun instead) – of the (widely known) compound שלט רחוקshalát rakhók – cf. theAcademy of the Hebrew Language's שלט רחקshalát rákhak; and
(ii) (Hebrew>) Israeli שטוטshitút 'wandering, vagrancy'. Israeli שלטוטshiltút was introduced by the Academy of the Hebrew Language in [...] 1996. Synchronically, it might appear to result from reduplication of the final consonant ofshalát 'remote control'.
Another example of blending which has also been explained as mere reduplication is Israeli גחליליתgakhlilít 'fire-fly, glow-fly,Lampyris'. This coinage byHayyim Nahman Bialik blends (Hebrew>) Israeli גחלתgakhélet 'burning coal' with (Hebrew>) Israeli לילהláyla 'night'. Compare this with the unblended חכליליתkhakhlilít '(black) redstart,Phœnicurus' (<Biblical Hebrew חכליל 'dull red, reddish'). Synchronically speaking though, most native Israeli-speakers feel thatgakhlilít includes a reduplication of the third radical of גחל √għl. This is incidentally howErnest Klein[24] explainsgakhlilít. Since he is attempting to provide etymology, his description might be misleading if one agrees that Hayyim Nahman Bialik had blending in mind."[25]
"There are two possible etymological analyses for Israeli Hebrew כספרkaspár 'bank clerk, teller'. The first is that it consists of (Hebrew>) Israeli כסףkésef 'money' and the (International/Hebrew>) Israeliagentivesuffix ר--ár. The second is that it is a quasi-portmanteau word which blends כסףkésef 'money' and (Hebrew>) Israeli ספר √spr 'count'. Israeli Hebrew כספרkaspár started as a brand name but soon entered the common language. Even if the second analysis is the correct one, the final syllable ר--ár apparently facilitated nativization since it was regarded as the Hebrew suffix ר--år (probably ofPersian pedigree), which usually refers to craftsmen and professionals, for instance as inMendele Mocher Sforim's coinage סמרטוטרsmartutár 'rag-dealer'."[26]
Blending may occur with an error inlexical selection, the process by which a speaker uses his semantic knowledge to choose words. Lewis Carroll's explanation, which gave rise to the use of 'portmanteau' for such combinations, was:
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 ... you will say "frumious."[27]
The errors are based on similarity of meanings, rather thanphonological similarities, and the morphemes or phonemes stay in the same position within the syllable.[28]
Some languages, likeJapanese, encourage the shortening and merging of borrowed foreign words (as ingairaigo), because they are long or difficult to pronounce in the target language.[29] For example,karaoke, a combination of the Japanese wordkara (meaningempty) and the clipped formoke of the English loanword "orchestra" (J.ōkesutora,オーケストラ), is a Japanese blend that has entered the English language. TheVietnamese language also encourages blend words formed fromSino-Vietnamese vocabulary. For example, the termViệt Cộng is derived from the first syllables of "Việt Nam" (Vietnam) and "Cộng sản" (communist).
Many corporatebrand names, trademarks, and initiatives, and names of corporations and organizations themselves, are blends. For example,Wiktionary, one ofWikipedia's sister projects, is a blend ofwiki anddictionary.
The wordportmanteau was introduced in this sense byLewis Carroll in the bookThrough the Looking-Glass (1871),[30] whereHumpty Dumpty explains to Alice the coinage of unusual words used in "Jabberwocky".[31]Slithy means "slimy and lithe" andmimsy means "miserable and flimsy". Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice the practice of combining words in various ways, comparing it to the then-commontype of luggage, which opens into two equal parts:
You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.
In his introduction to his 1876 poemThe Hunting of the Snark, Carroll again usesportmanteau when discussing lexical selection:[31]
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".
In then-contemporary English, a portmanteau was asuitcase that opened into two equal sections. According to theOED Online, a portmanteau is a "case or bag for carrying clothing and other belongings when travelling; (originally) one of a form suitable for carrying on horseback; (now esp.) one in the form of a stiff leather case hinged at the back to open into two equal parts".[32] According toThe American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD), the etymology of the word is the Frenchporte-manteau, fromporter, "to carry", andmanteau, "cloak" (from Old Frenchmantel, from Latinmantellum).[33] According to theOED Online, the etymology of the word is the "officer who carries the mantle of a person in a high position (1507 in Middle French), case or bag for carrying clothing (1547), clothes rack (1640)".[32] In modern French, aporte-manteau is aclothes valet, a coat-tree or similar article of furniture for hanging up jackets, hats, umbrellas and the like.[34][35][36]
An occasional synonym for "portmanteau word" isfrankenword, anautological word exemplifying the phenomenon it describes, blending "Frankenstein" and "word".[37]
Manyneologisms are examples of blends, but many blends have become part of the lexicon.[31] InPunch in 1896, the wordbrunch (breakfast + lunch) was introduced as a "portmanteau word".[38] In 1964, the newly independent African republic ofTanganyika andZanzibar chose the portmanteau wordTanzania as its name. SimilarlyEurasia is a portmanteau of Europe and Asia.
Some city names are portmanteaus of the border regions they straddle:Texarkana spreads across the Texas-Arkansas-Louisiana border, whileCalexico andMexicali are respectively the American and Mexican sides of a singleconurbation. A scientific example is aliger, which is a cross between a male lion and a female tiger (atigon is a similar cross in which the male is a tiger). A more modern blend of ‘Cat’ and ‘Rabbit’ was founded 2023 on X (formerly known as Twitter) to describe a circulating image of a mix between the two, producing the word ‘Cabbit’.
Many company or brand names are portmanteaus, includingMicrosoft, a portmanteau ofmicrocomputer andsoftware; the cheeseCambozola combines a similar rind toCamembert with the same mould used to makeGorgonzola; passenger rail companyAmtrak, a portmanteau ofAmerica andtrack;Velcro, a portmanteau of the Frenchvelours (velvet) andcrochet (hook);Verizon, a portmanteau ofveritas (Latin for truth) andhorizon;Viacom, a portmanteau of Video and Audio communications, andComEd (a Chicago-area electric utility company), a portmanteau ofCommonwealth andEdison.
Jeoportmanteau! is a recurring category on the American televisionquiz showJeopardy! The category's name is itself a portmanteau of the wordsJeopardy andportmanteau. Responses in the category are portmanteaus constructed by fitting two words together.
Portmanteau words may be produced by joiningproper nouns with common nouns, such as "gerrymandering", which refers to the scheme of Massachusetts GovernorElbridge Gerry for politically contrived redistricting; the perimeter of one of the districts thereby created resembled a very curvysalamander in outline. The term gerrymander has itself contributed to portmanteau termsbjelkemander andplaymander.
The wordrefudiate was famously used bySarah Palin when she misspoke, conflating the wordsrefute andrepudiate. Though the word was agaffe, it was recognized as theNew Oxford American Dictionary's "Word of the Year" in 2010.[39]
The business lexicon includes words like "advertainment" (advertising as entertainment), "advertorial" (a blurred distinction between advertising and editorial), "infotainment" (information about entertainment or itself intended to entertain by its manner of presentation), and "infomercial" (informational commercial).
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 produceepithets such as "Billary" (referring to former United States presidentBill Clinton and his wife, former United States Secretary of StateHillary 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 linguistBenjamin Zimmer states.[42] For instance,Putler is used by critics ofVladimir Putin, merging his name withAdolf Hitler. By contrast, the public, including the media, use portmanteaus to refer to their favorite pairings as a way to "...giv[e] people an essence of who they are within the same name."[43] This is particularly seen in cases of fictional and real-life "supercouples". An early known example,Bennifer, referred to film starsBen Affleck andJennifer Lopez. Other examples includeBrangelina (Brad Pitt andAngelina Jolie) andTomKat (Tom Cruise andKatie Holmes).[43] On Wednesday, 28 June 2017,The New York Timescrossword included the quip, "How I wishNatalie Portman datedJacques Cousteau, so I could call them 'Portmanteau'".[44]
Holidays are another example, as inThanksgivukkah, a portmanteau neologism given to the convergence of the American holiday ofThanksgiving and the first day of theJewish holiday ofHanukkah on Thursday, 28 November 2013.[45][46]Chrismukkah is another pop-culture portmanteau neologism popularized by the TV dramaThe O.C., a merging of the holidays of Christianity's Christmas and Judaism's Hanukkah.
In theDisney filmBig Hero 6, the film is situated in a fictitious city called "San Fransokyo", which is a portmanteau of two real locations,San Francisco andTokyo.[47]
Modern Hebrew abounds with blending. Along with CD, or simplyדיסק (disk), Hebrew has the blendתקליטור (taklitór), which consists ofתקליט (taklít 'phonograph record') andאור (or 'light'). Other blends in Hebrew include the following:[48]
תפוד (tapúd 'potato'), fromתפוח (tapúakh 'apple') andאדמה (adamá 'soil, earth'), but the fullתפוח אדמה (tapúakh adamá 'apple of the soil, apple of the earth') is more common
There is a tradition oflinguistic purism in Icelandic, andneologisms are frequently created from pre-existing words. For example,tölva 'computer' is a portmanteau oftala 'digit, number' andvölva 'oracle, seeress'.[56]
InIndonesian, portmanteaus andacronyms are very common in both formal and informal usage.
A common use of a portmanteau in the Indonesian language is to refer to locations and areas of the country. For example,Jabodetabek is a portmanteau that refers to theJakarta metropolitan area orGreater Jakarta, which includes the regions of Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, Bekasi).
In the Malaysian national language ofBahasa Melayu, the wordjadong was constructed out of three Malay words for evil (jahat), stupid (bodoh) and arrogant (sombong) to be used on the worst kinds of community and religious leaders who mislead naive, submissive and powerless folk under their thrall.[citation needed]
A very common type of portmanteau in Japanese forms one word from the beginnings of two others (that is, from twoback-clippings).[57] The portion of each input word retained is usually twomorae, which is tantamount to onekanji in most words written in kanji.
The inputs to the process can be native words,Sino-Japanese words,gairaigo (later borrowings), or combinations thereof. A Sino-Japanese example is the name東大 (Tōdai) for theUniversity of Tokyo, in full東京大学 (Tōkyōdaigaku). With borrowings, typical results are words such asパソコン(pasokon), meaningpersonal computer (PC), which despite being formed of English elements does not exist in English; it is auniquely Japanese contraction of the Englishpersonal computer (パーソナル・コンピュータ,pāsonarukonpyūta). Another example,Pokémon (ポケモン), is a contracted form of the English wordspocket (ポケット,poketto) andmonsters (モンスター,monsutā).[58] A famous example of a blend with mixed sources iskaraoke (カラオケ,karaoke), blending the Japanese word forempty (空,kara) and the Greek wordorchestra (オーケストラ,ōkesutora). The Japanese fad of egg-shaped keychain pet toys from the 1990s,Tamagotchi, is a portmanteau combining the two Japanese wordstamago (たまご, 'egg'), anduotchi (ウオッチ, 'watch'). The portmanteau can also be seen as a combination oftamago (たまご, 'egg'), andtomodachi (友だち, 'friend').
Sometitles also are portmanteaus, such asHetalia (ヘタリア). It came fromHetare (ヘタレ, 'idiot') andItalia (イタリア, 'Italy'). Another example isServamp, which came from the English wordsServant (サーヴァント) andVampire (ヴァンパイア).
Although traditionally uncommon in Spanish, portmanteaus are increasingly finding their way into the language, mainly for marketing and commercial purposes. Examples inMexican Spanish includecafebrería from combiningcafetería 'coffee shop' andlibrería 'bookstore', orteletón 'telethon' from combiningtelevisión andmaratón. Portmanteaus are also frequently used to make commercial brands, such as "chocolleta" from "chocolate" + "galleta". They are also often used to create business company names, especially for small, family-owned businesses, where owners' names are combined to create a unique name (such as Rocar, from "Roberto" + "Carlos", or Mafer, from "María" + "Fernanda"). These usages help to create distinguishable trademarks. It is a common occurrence for people with two names to combine them into a single nickname, like Juanca for Juan Carlos, Or Marilú for María de Lourdes.
Company names and brands with portmanteaus are common in Spanish. Some examples of Spanish portmanteaus for Mexican companies include: The Mexican flag carrierAeroméxico, (Aerovías de México), Banorte (Bank and North),Cemex (Cement and Mexico),Jumex (Jugos Mexicanos or Mexican Juice),Mabe (from founders Egon MAbardi and Francisco BErrondo),Pemex (Petróleos Mexicanos or Mexican Oil),Softtek (portmanteau and stylization of Software and technology), andTelmex (Teléfonos de Mexico).Gamesa (Galletera Mexicana, S.A. or Mexican Biscuit Company, Inc.) andFamsa (fabricantes Muebleros, S.A.) are examples of portmanteaus of four words, including the "S.A." (Sociedad Anónima).
Many more portmanteaus in Spanish come fromAnglicisms, which are words borrowed from English, likemódem,transistor,códec,email,internet, andemoticon.
A somewhat popular example in Spain is the wordgallifante,[67] a portmanteau ofgallo y elefante 'cockerel and elephant'. It was the prize on the Spanish version of the children TV showChild's Play (Spanish:Juego de niños) that ran on the public television channelLa 1 ofTelevisión Española (TVE) from 1988 to 1992.[68]
Inlinguistics, a blend is an amalgamation or fusion of independentlexemes, while aportmanteau orportmanteau morph is a singlemorph that is analyzed as representing two (or more) underlyingmorphemes.[69][70][71][72] For example, in the Latin wordanimalis, the ending-is is a portmanteau morph because it is an unanalysable combination of two morphemes: a morpheme for the singular number and one for the genitive case. In English, two separate morphs are used:of an animal. Other examples include French: *à le⇒au[o] and*de le⇒du[dy].[69]
^Adams attributes the termsplinter to J. M. Berman, "Contribution on blending,"Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 9 (1961), pp. 278–281.
^abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwExample provided by Elisa Mattiello's chapter "Blends" (ofExtra-grammatical Morphology in English: Abbreviations, Blends, Reduplicatives, and Related Phenomena, Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013) of a blend of this kind.
^Example provided by Elisa Mattiello's chapter "Blends" (ofExtra-grammatical Morphology in English: Abbreviations, Blends, Reduplicatives, and Related Phenomena, Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013) of a blend of this kind. (Etymologically,fan is a clipping offanatic; but it has since become lexicalized.)
^abElisa Mattiello, "Lexical index." Appendix (pp. 287–329) toExtra-grammatical Morphology in English: Abbreviations, Blends, Reduplicatives, and Related Phenomena (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013;doi:10.1515/9783110295399;ISBN978-3-11-029539-9).
^Example provided by Elisa Mattiello's chapter "Blends" (ofExtra-grammatical Morphology in English: Abbreviations, Blends, Reduplicatives, and Related Phenomena, Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013) of a blend of this kind, slightly amended.
^abExample provided by Mattiello of a blend of this kind. The word is found inFinnegans Wake; Mattiello credits Almuth Grésillon,La règle et le monstre: Le mot-valise. Interrogations sur la langue, à partir d'un corpus de Heinrich Heine (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1984), 15, for bringing it to her attention.
^"Portmanteau".The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.). 2000. Archived fromthe original on 26 November 2007. Retrieved21 June 2008.
^"portmanteau word".Webster's New World College Dictionary. Cleveland: Wiley. 2010.ISBN978-0-7645-7125-1.
^Stefan Th. Gries, "Quantitative corpus data on blend formation: Psycho- and cognitive-linguistic perspectives", in Vincent Renner, François Maniez, Pierre Arnaud, eds,Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Lexical Blending (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012;ISBN978-3-11-028923-7), 145–168.
^Laurie Bauer, "Blends: Core and periphery", in Vincent Renner, François Maniez, Pierre Arnaud, eds,Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Lexical Blending (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012;ISBN978-3-11-028923-7), 11–22.
^Outi Bat-El and Evan-Gary Cohen, "Stress in English blends: A constraint-based analysis", in Vincent Renner, François Maniez, Pierre Arnaud, eds,Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Lexical Blending (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012;ISBN978-3-11-028923-7)
^abSuzanne Kemmer, "Schemas and lexical blends." In Hubert C. Cuyckens et al., eds,Motivation in Language: From Case Grammar to Cognitive Linguistics: Studies in Honour of Günter Radden (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2003;ISBN9789027247551,ISBN9781588114266).
^Angela Ralli and George J. Xydopoulos, "Blend formation in Modern Greek", in Vincent Renner, François Maniez, Pierre Arnaud, eds,Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Lexical Blending (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012;ISBN978-3-11-028923-7), 35–50.
^Harold Wentworth, "'Sandwich' words and rime-caused nonce words",West Virginia University Bulletin: Philological Studies 3 (1939), 65–71; cited inAlgeo, John (1977). "Blends, a Structural and Systemic View".American Speech.52 (1/2):47–64.doi:10.2307/454719.JSTOR454719.
^Francis A. Wood, "Iteratives, blends, and 'Streckformen',"Modern Philology 9 (1911), 157–194.
^Algeo, John (1977). "Blends, a Structural and Systemic View".American Speech.52 (1/2):47–64.doi:10.2307/454719.JSTOR454719.
^Michael H. Kelly, "To 'brunch' or to 'brench': Some aspects of blend structure,"Linguistics 36 (1998), 579–590.
^Adrienne Lehrer, "Blendalicious," in Judith Munat, ed.,Lexical Creativity, Texts and Contexts (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2007;ISBN9789027215673), 115–133.
^Giorgio-Francesco Arcodia and Fabio Montermini, "Are reduced compounds compounds? Morphological and prosodic properties of reduced compounds in Russian and Mandarin Chinese", in Vincent Renner, François Maniez, Pierre Arnaud, eds,Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Lexical Blending (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012;ISBN978-3-11-028923-7), 93–114.
^Klein, Ernest (1987).A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language. Jerusalem: Carta. See p. 97.
^Tully, Shawn (7 March 2015)."The crazy, true-life adventures of Norway's most radical billionaire".Fortune.Archived from the original on 28 July 2016.A few years later Thomas Olsen would rechristen the company Timex. He claims he hatched the iconic name from an unusual confluence of sources. Recalls Fred: "My father always loved to noodle with words. He liked to read Time magazine, and he used a lot of Kleenex, so he put the two names together and got Timex."
^"Twingo I".Renault UK Press Office. Renault.Archived from the original on 8 September 2019. Retrieved15 July 2019.
^Chrost, Diarmait Mac Giolla (23 June 2018).Jailtacht: The Irish Language, Symbolic Power and Political Violence in Northern Ireland, 1972–2008. University of Wales Press.ISBN9780708324967.JSTORj.ctt9qhjkk.
^Kristján Árnason; Sigrún Helgadóttir (1991), "Terminology and Icelandic Language Policy", Behovet och nyttan av terminologiskt arbete på 90-talet, Nordterm 5, Nordterm-symposium, pp. 7–21.
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