A
portmanteau () or
portmanteau word is used broadly to mean a
blend of two (or more)
words or
morphemes and their meanings into one new word,
[Oxford English Dictionary, Portmanteau definition 4b, giving Carroll as first user, second usage appearing in 1882 in the Cornhill Magazine] and narrowly in
linguistics fields to mean only a blend of two or more
function words.
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."
Such a definition of "portmanteau word" overlaps with the
grammatical term
contraction, and linguists avoid using the former term in such cases. As an example: the words
do +
not become the contraction
don't, a single word that represents the meaning of the combined words.
A distinction can be made between the two by noting that contractions can only be formed with two words that would otherwise appear in sequence within the sentence, whereas a "Portmanteau word" is typically formed by combining two or more existing words that all relate to a singular concept which the new portmanteau is meant to describe. An example being the well-known portmanteau word "Spanglish", referring to speaking a mix of both Spanish and English at the same time. In this case, there is no logical situation in which the speaker would say "Spanish English" in place of the portmanteau word in the same way they could say "
do not" in place of the contraction "
don't", or "
we are" in place of "
we're".
Origin
The usage of the word "portmanteau" in this sense first appeared in
Lewis Carroll's book
Through the Looking-Glass (1871),
in which
Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice the coinage of the unusual words in
Jabberwocky:
[Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., and Hyams, N. (2007) An Introduction to Language, Eighth Edition. Boston: Thomson Wadsworth. ISBN 1-4130-1773-8]- "‘Slithy’ means ‘lithe and slimy’... You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word"
- "‘Mimsy’ is ‘flimsy and miserable’ (there's another portmanteau ... for you)".
Carroll uses the word again 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 ... you will say "frumious."
According to the
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the word
portmanteau comes from French
porter, to carry +
manteau, cloak (from Old French
mantel, from Latin
mantellum).
Examples
thumb|right|right|The original "salamander"/" class="wiki">Gerrymander" pictured in an 1812 cartoon. The word is a portmanteau of Massachusetts Governor 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. A
spork is an eating utensil that is a combination of a
spoon and
fork.
"
Wikipedia" is an example of a portmanteau word because it combines the word "
wiki" with the word "
Encyclopedia."
"Jeoportmanteau!" is a recurring category on the American television
quiz show Jeopardy!. The category's name is itself a portmanteau of "Jeopardy" and "portmanteau". Responses in the category are portmanteaus 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 theme of social problems, along with the stereotypical depiction of Black people in film.
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. 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
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 (and former couple)
Ben Affleck and
Jennifer Lopez. Other examples include
Brangelina (
Brad Pitt and
Angelina Jolie) and
TomKat (
Tom Cruise and
Katie Holmes). 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.]
Portmanteaux (or portmanteaus)Examples in languages other than English
Modern Hebrew
Modern Hebrew abounds with European mechanisms such as blending: "Along with kómpaktdisk ‘compact disc’, Hebrew has the blend taklitór, which consists of the Hebrew-descent taklít ‘record’ and ’or ‘light’. Modern Hebrew is full of portmanteau blends [...] such as (1) arpíakh ‘smog’, from arafél ‘fog’ and píakh ‘soot’; (2) mídrakhov ‘(pedestrian) mall, promenade’, from midrakhá ‘footpath’ and rekhóv ‘street’; (3) makhazémer ‘musical’, from makhazé ‘play (n)’ and zémer ‘singing’; or (4) bohoráim ‘brunch’, from bóker ‘morning, breakfast (cf. arukhát bóker ‘breakfast’)’ and tsohoráim ‘noon, lunch (cf. arukhát tsohoráim ‘lunch’)’."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 ("seeress").Indonesian
Golput is used to refer to voters who abstain from voting, from Golongan Putih, "blank party" or "white party."Japanese
There are many examples of borrowed word blends in Japanese. "Pasocon", written in katakana (to denote its loan word status) meaning PC (Personal computer) is not officially an English loan word. The word does not exist in English. The blend of the English words 'personal computer' makes the uniquely Japanese word. Also, Momusu is the shortened version of Morning and Musume, a popular Japanese girl group."Pokémon" from the English 'Pocket' and 'Monster' is another example.Portmanteau morph
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 function words. Examples of such combination include French ("à le" → au; "de le" → du), German ("in das" → ins; "in dem" → im; "zu dem" → zum; "zu der" → zur) and Spanish ("a el" → al; "de el" → del). This usage has been referred to as "portmanteau morph."See also
