Concept

Portmanteau

Overview

In literature, a portmanteau, also known in linguistics and lexicography as a blend word, lexical blend, or simply a blend, is a word formed by combining the meanings and parts of the sounds of two or more words. English examples include smog, coined by blending smoke and fog, and motel, from motor (motorist) and hotel. The term "portmanteau", derived from the French porte-manteau, literally is a two-part piece of luggage that was first applied metaphorically in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass (1871) to describe the combination of words.

In some languages, contamination refers to a subset of blends, where the words combined are synonyms or have similar meanings. This kind of blend can be deliberate or accidental. 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, becoming ); however, don't is also an example of a portmanteau morph. 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". 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.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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An example of this is, when the simple propositions are connected by the particle _or_; as, either A is B or C is D; or by the particle _if_; as, A is B if C is D. In the former case, the proposition is called _disjunctive_, in the latter, _conditional_: the name _hypothetical_ was originally common to both.
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Portmanteau is.
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This process of composition is sometimes found in its incipient stage—a stage in which the component words are temporarily united to signify some unnamed object, and do not (from lack of frequent use) permanently cohere. But in the majority of inferior languages, the process of “agglutination,” as it is called, has gone far enough to produce considerable stability in the compound words: there is a manifest…
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
States what Portmanteau is.
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This word, therefore, expressing so very abstract and metaphysical an idea, would not easily or readily occur to the first formers of language. What are called the personal pronouns, it may be observed, are among the last words of which children learn to make use. A child, speaking of itself, says, _Billy walks_, _Billy sits_, **instead of _I walk_, _I sit_.
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
States what Portmanteau is.
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Philosophers who discussed Portmanteau

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Hybrid word

Place in the tradition

Part of Analytic philosophy.

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