Portmanteau

A motel (top) and smog (bottom), examples of blend words in English

In linguistics, a portmanteau[a] or blend, also known as a blend word or lexical blend, is a word formed by combining the meanings and parts of the sounds of two or more words.[2][1][3] English examples include smog, coined by blending smoke and fog,[1][4] and motel, from motor (motorist) and hotel.[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 a contraction. 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 as do not naturally becoming don't (phonologically, /duː nɒt/ becoming /doʊnt/). A blend also differs from a compound, which fully preserves the stems of the original words. The British lecturer Valerie Adams's 1973 Introduction to Modern English Word-Formation explains that "In words such as motel..., 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 complete morpheme, but instead a mere splinter or leftover word fragment. For instance, starfish is a compound, not a blend, of star and fish, 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 established compounds or phrases, they can be considered clipped compounds, such as romcom for romantic comedy.[10]

  1. ^ a b c "Portmanteau". Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved 21 June 2008.
  2. ^ Garner's Modern American Usage, p. 644.
  3. ^ "Portmanteau". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.). 2000. Archived from the original on 26 November 2007. Retrieved 21 June 2008.
  4. ^ "portmanteau word". Webster's New World College Dictionary. Cleveland: Wiley. 2010. ISBN 978-0-7645-7125-1.
  5. ^ "Portmanteau word". Encyclopædia Britannica.
  6. ^ Murugova, Elena V. (30 April 2018). "Linguacognitive Mechanisms Of Conceptual Contaminants Integration In The Modern English Language". European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences. Word, Utterance, Text: Cognitive, Pragmatic and Cultural Aspects. doi:10.15405/epsbs.2018.04.02.59. ISSN 2357-1330.
  7. ^ Wheeler, Benjamin Ide (1887). Analogy and the Scope of Its Application in Language. Vol. 2. Cornell University Press. doi:10.7591/j.cttq44vj.
  8. ^ Vasileanu, Monica; Niculescu-Gorpin, Anabella-Gloria; Radu-Bejenaru, Cristina-Andreea (July 2024). "Keep calm and carry on blending: Experimental insights into Romanian lexical blending". Word Structure. 17 (1–2): 56–90. doi:10.3366/word.2024.0236. ISSN 1750-1245.
  9. ^ Valerie Adams, An Introduction to Modern English Word-Formation, Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1973; ISBN 0-582-55042-4, p. 142.
  10. ^ Fandrych, Ingrid (10 November 2008). "Submorphemic elements in the formation of acronyms, blends and clippings". Lexis (2). doi:10.4000/lexis.713.


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