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blend

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blend

A blend of "smack" and "mash"

Definition:

A word formed by merging the sounds and meanings of two or more other words or word parts.

The most common type of blend is a full word followed by a word part (called a splinter), as in motorcade (motor + cavalcade).

See also:

Examples and Observations:

  • agitprop (agitation + propaganda)
  • alcopop (alcohol + pop)
  • bash (bat + mash)
  • biopic (biography + picture)
  • Breathalyzer (breath + analyzer)
  • camcorder (camera + recorder)
  • chexting (cheating + texting)
  • clash (clap + crash)
  • cosmeceutical (cosmetic + pharmaceutical)
  • docudrama (documentary + drama)
  • electrocute (electricity + execute)
  • emoticon (emote + icon)
  • faction (fact + fiction)
  • fanzine (fan + magazine)
  • flare (flame + glare)
  • flirtationship (flirting + relationship)
  • glimmer (gleam + shimmer)
  • Globish (global + English)
  • guitarthritis (guitar + arthritis)
  • infotainment (information + entertainment)
  • moped (motor + pedal)
  • palimony (pal + alimony)
  • pornacopia (pornography + cornucopia)
  • pulsar (pulse + quasar)
  • sexcapade (sex + escapade)
  • sexploitation (sex + exploitation)
  • sitcom (situation + comedy)
  • slanguage (slang + language)
  • smash (smack + mash)
  • sportscast (sports + broadcast)
  • stagflation (stagnation + inflation)
  • staycation (stay home + vacation)
  • telegenic (television + photogenic)
  • textpectation (text message + expectation)
  • workaholic (work + alcoholic)


  • "When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world."
    (Benjamin Disraeli, Lothair, 1870)


  • "His attention was directed to them by his host jocosely, and he accepted them seriously as they drank in jocoserious silence Epps's massproduct, the creature cocoa."
    (James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922)


  • "[Barack Obama is] a hope-ronaut. He's in a rarefied level of hope where the rest of us have to take tanks up with us."
    (Stephen Colbert, Entertainment Weekly, Oct. 3, 2008)


  • Hispandering: manipulating one's rhetoric or actions to court Hispanic voters.


  • "Blending is an area of word formation where cleverness can be rewarded by instant popularity: sexploitation from the seventies, the Chunnel from the eighties are common words now. . . . [U]npleasant as the phenomena they describe, the words guesstimate, testilying, pagejacking, spamouflage, compfusion, and explornography will probably elicit a smile."
    (R. P. Stockwell and D. Minkova, English Words. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001)
Also Known As: portmanteau word, telescoping, lexical interlocking, semantic conflation
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