Neologism or Portmanteau?
This all started with my thinking of a new word: Snarkastic.
Snarkastic is an adjective that defines sarcasm with more than a hint of snarkiness in it. I've certainly engaged in snarkasm.
Then I was trying to figure out what literary term described this. I didn't want to go with SNIGLET (Rich Hall's term for combined words), though it is certainly that.
I first thought was that it was a neologism. Some research indicated that it could not be a neologism until it was actually on the cusp of entering the lexicon (sort of like 'sniglet').
It is a portmanteau, or the combination of two words to make one word that references the meaning of the source words. Another one I had thought of years ago (which has never become a neologism) was URGINATION - A need to pee immediately.
That brought me to scrabble, since portmanteau and manteau are both valid (both take an X and an S). If MANTEAU were on the board, it could be front-extended with PORT. Or if PORT were on the board, MANTEAU could be added. I'm guessing I'll never have the opportunity (or more likely, I will have forgotten portmanteau if the opportunity is there), so I'll leave it to my several scrabble playing LJ followers to play it some day.
(ps....I just googled snarkastic and it's in the urban dictionary...so while I did make it up, it was obvious enough to have been made up before)
Snarkastic is an adjective that defines sarcasm with more than a hint of snarkiness in it. I've certainly engaged in snarkasm.
Then I was trying to figure out what literary term described this. I didn't want to go with SNIGLET (Rich Hall's term for combined words), though it is certainly that.
I first thought was that it was a neologism. Some research indicated that it could not be a neologism until it was actually on the cusp of entering the lexicon (sort of like 'sniglet').
It is a portmanteau, or the combination of two words to make one word that references the meaning of the source words. Another one I had thought of years ago (which has never become a neologism) was URGINATION - A need to pee immediately.
That brought me to scrabble, since portmanteau and manteau are both valid (both take an X and an S). If MANTEAU were on the board, it could be front-extended with PORT. Or if PORT were on the board, MANTEAU could be added. I'm guessing I'll never have the opportunity (or more likely, I will have forgotten portmanteau if the opportunity is there), so I'll leave it to my several scrabble playing LJ followers to play it some day.
(ps....I just googled snarkastic and it's in the urban dictionary...so while I did make it up, it was obvious enough to have been made up before)