portmanteau word

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

See also:

• Blend
• Introduction to Etymology: Word Histories
• Listicle
• Logology
• Malaphor
• Neologism
• Sniglet
• Splinter
• Where Do New Words Come From?
• Word Play

Etymology:

Examples & Observations:

• Brangelina (Brad Pitt + Angelina Jolie)
• Frankenfood (Frankenstein + food)
• infomercial (information + commercial)
• motel (motor + hotel)
• netiquette (net + etiquette)
• Oxbridge (Oxford + Cambridge)
• pixel (pic + element)
• quasar (quasi-stellar + star)
• sexting (sex + texting)
• smog (smoke + fog)
• splatter (splash + spatter)
• statusphere (status + atmosphere)
• Tanzania (Tanganyika + Zanzibar)
• telethon (television + marathon)
• Viagravation (Viagra + aggravation)



• "A word formed by fusing elements of two other words, such as Lewis Carroll's slithy from slimy and lithe. He called such forms portmanteau words, because they were like a two-part portmanteau bag. Blending is related to abbreviation, derivation, and compounding, but distinct from them all."
  (Tom McArthur, "Blend." The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford Univ. Press, 1992)



• "[D]ancercise, simulcast, Frappuccino--they wear their meanings on their shortened sleeves. Portmanteau words are the sound bites of modern English, calculated to catch on the first time people hear them."
  (Geoffrey Nunberg, The Way We Talk Now. Houghton Mifflin, 2001)



• "Smirting happens when two people, smoking outside, fall to flirting, and discover that they have more in common than simply nicotine. In Ireland, where the term originated after the ban in 2004, there is even evidence of non-smokers joining the smoky throng outside because the atmosphere there is more flirtatious.
  
  "Smirting is a portmanteau word, formed by packing parts of two words together to create another, combining the sense of each."
  (Ben Macintyre, "Ben Macintyre Celebrates the Portmanteau." The Times, May 2, 2008)



• "In her first tweet, [Sarah] Palin didn't write speak out; she used another term--refudiate. A few minutes later, the Tweet was rewritten with refudiate--which is not actually a word--removed, replaced by refute. . . .
  
  "The word caught someone's attention, because a few hours later Palin refused to refute refudiate, she tweeted that she's just following in Shakespeare's footsteps.
  
  "'Refudiate, misunderestimate, wee-wee'd up. English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!'"
  (Carolyn Kellogg, "Wherefore Art Thou, Refudiate? Sarah Palin as Shakespeare." Los Angeles Times, July 19, 2010)



• "So a blog is a web log? Is there an apostrophe, or do you guys not even have the strength for that? You’re just going to jam two words together?"
  (Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report, Feb. 2006)