Portmanteau
A
portmanteau (plural:
portmanteaus or
portmanteaux) is a term in
linguistics that refers to a word or
morpheme that fuses two or more
grammatical functions. 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. '
animatronics' from '
animation' and '
electronics'). In linguistics, these folk portmanteaux are called
blends. Typically, portmanteau words are
neologisms.
The word was coined by
Lewis Carroll in
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). In the book,
Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice words from
Jabberwocky, saying, "Well,
slithy means
lithe and slimy ... You see it's like a
portmanteau— there are two meanings packed up into one word." Carroll often used such words to a humorous effect in his work.
"Portmanteau", from Middle French "porter" (to carry) and "manteau" (a coat or cover), formerly referred to a large travelling bag or suitcase with two compartments, hence the linguistic idea of fusing two words and their meanings into one. "Portmanteau" is rarely used to refer to a suitcase in English any more, since that type of a suitcase has fallen into disuse. In French, the word has the different meaning of "coat rack," and sometimes "coat hanger," and is spelled "porte-manteau."
"Portmanteau word" was the original phrase used to describe such words (as listed in dictionaries published as late as the early
1990s), but this has since been abbreviated to simply "portmanteau" as the term (and the type of words it describes) gained popularity.
A
portmanteau morpheme is a
morpheme that fuses two grammatical categories (see
Fusional language). The classical example of such a morpheme in English is the verbal suffix
-s. This particular suffix carries (i.e., ports) at least four distinct inflectional meanings and imparts each of these onto the verb's meaning:
*Singular (number)
*Third-person (perspective)
*Present (tense)
*Indicative (mood)
Spanish verb suffixes are also exceptionally fusional, with very many portmanteaux in the Spanish inflectional system.
A
portmanteau word is a word that fuses two function words. This use overlaps a bit with the folk term
contraction, but linguists tend to avoid using the latter. Example: In French,
à +
les becomes
aux (), a single indivisible word that contains both meanings.
Outside linguistics, the words that are called
blends are popularly labeled
portmanteaux. The term
portmanteau is used in a different, yet still not clearly defined sense, to refer to a blending of the parts of two or more words (generally the first part of one word and the ending of a second word) to combine their meanings into a single
neologism. One of the more famous portmanteaux in
postmodern Continental philosophy is
différance. Coined by
Jacques Derrida,
différance is a term that combines the terms to
differ and to
defer (in the
Saussurean sense) to describe the fractured and eternally-
signifying character of language (see
deconstruction).
Recently many
magazines and
television programs such as
US Weekly,
People Magazine,
Entertainment Tonight, and
Access Hollywood use portmanteaux of the names of celebrity couples. The original was "
Bennifer" (originally for
Ben Affleck and
Jennifer Lopez, later revived as "Bennifer 2" or "Bennifer Jr." for Affleck and
Jennifer Garner, who are now married); other widely used names include Tomkat (for
Tom Cruise and
Katie Holmes), Brangelina (for
Brad Pitt and
Angelina Jolie), Vaughniston (for
Vince Vaughn and
Jennifer Aniston), and
Filliam H. Muffman (for
William H. Macy and
Felicity Huffman). In politics, "Billary" was used during the early years of President
Bill Clinton's administration regarding the active role played by
Hillary Rodham Clinton.[
1]
Many TV shows' fans tend to do this with the names of their favorite couples like "Burktina" for Preston
Burke and Cris
tina Yang from
Grey's Anatomy, "
Clois" for Lois Lane and Clark Kent from
Smallville, "Spuffy" for Buffy and Spike from
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or in
The Office "Ram" for Pam and Roy, "R. Kelly" for Ryan and Kelly, "Jam" for Jim and Pam and "Dwangela" for Dwight and Angela. This also happens in other fandoms, such as the
Harry Potter fandom with "Harmony" for Harry and Hermione or "Heron" for Hermione and Ron, or even "Dramione" for Draco and Hermione.
James Joyce used blends extensively in
Finnegans Wake. Many corporate
brand names, trademarks, and initiatives, as well as names of corporations and organizations themselves, are blends. For want of a better example,
Wikipedia is a blend made from
wiki and
encyclopedia, and
Wiktionary, one of Wikipedia's sister projects, is a blend of
wiki and
dictionary. Elsewhere,
Nabisco is a blend of the initial syllables of
National Biscuit Company, Jagex is also a blend of the initial letters of Java Gaming Experts. Blended names were used extensively in the merged
Marvel/
DC continuity of the
Amalgam Comics universe. Common names of chemical substances are also often blended versions of the full name, like acetominophen (Tylenol), which is short for p-acetylaminophenol.
Most blends are formed by one of the following methods:# Part of the sounds of both components are mixed in a "creative" way, mostly preserving their order, such as
slithy, a blend of lithe and slimy. This method was preferred by
Lewis Carroll but is not much in use otherwise. # The beginning of one word is prepended to the end of the other, e.g.,
breakfast +
lunch =
brunch. Sometimes the letter/sound at the boundary is common to both components, e.g.,
smoke + =
smog. This is the most common method of blending.# Both components contain a common sequence of letters or sounds. The blend is composed of the beginning of the first component, the common part and the end of the second component. This is a less frequent kind of blend. For example, the word
Californication, popularized by the
Red Hot Chili Peppers, sounds as if it were
California +
fornication.# Some languages, like
Japanese, encourage the shortening and merging of borrowed foreign words (as in
gairaigo), because they are long or difficult to pronounce in the target language. For example,
karaoke, a combination of the Japanese word
kara (meaning
empty) and the clipped form
oke of the English loanword "orchestra" (J.
ōkesutora オーケストラ), is a Japanese blend that has entered the English language. (From the article
gairaigo.)# Engineers will often attempt to make a design more efficient by combining the functions of one or more elements into a single element. Some examples include the
stabilator,
ruddervators, sprotors, and
proprotor. This practice is most common in the aviation industry, but is by no means limited to that field.
*
Syllabic abbreviations, such as
INTERPOL.
*
Compound words, such as
bagpipe*
Contraction (grammar)*
Corruption (grammar)*
Morphology (linguistics)*
Rhyme*
Border towns in the United States with portmanteau names*
List of portmanteaux
