Neologism
Coining new words to fit one's current state/emotions seems to be a full trend nowadays. I've been thinking about how fast-food commercials started doing it in full force to market sandwiches (BK's TenderCrisp, Wendy's Baconator), Where did the trend that confounds spell-check come from? Sometime in the '90s, we began this habit of smushing words together. Did the dotcom boom, giving everything a run-together URL moniker, have something to do with it?
How I Met Your Mother sometimes combines two adjectives to create a more suitable descriptor, such as "hilarrible" (hilarious + terrible) or "insanulous" (insane + ridiculous). I'm all for it. Brevity is the soul of wit (please notice my apropos quotation as 4/23 is Talk Like Shakespeare Day. Hamlet. Respect.) After doing a bit of linguistics research, I learned what HIMYM is doing is called a portmanteau - the blending of two words to create a new one with a combined meaning.
Referring to blended words as portmanteaus came from Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland. Carroll coined an impressive number of terms in his poem "Jabberwocky" (in addition to giving me recurring nightmares during the length of my chlidhood, thanks in large part to the 1985 CBS live-action adaptation). The term "portmanteau" itself is self-illustrative: it's derived from the French compound porte, meaning "to hang," and manteau, meaning "coat" -- a coat hanger.
Two examples of Carroll's portmanteau words in "Jabberwocky" (courtesy of Wikipedia):
"Slithy," meaning both "lithe" and "slimy"
"‘Mimsy," meaning both "flimsy" and "miserable"
Just a little food for thought for ya. Foodthought. Thood. Fought. That doesn't work.
Smands
How I Met Your Mother sometimes combines two adjectives to create a more suitable descriptor, such as "hilarrible" (hilarious + terrible) or "insanulous" (insane + ridiculous). I'm all for it. Brevity is the soul of wit (please notice my apropos quotation as 4/23 is Talk Like Shakespeare Day. Hamlet. Respect.) After doing a bit of linguistics research, I learned what HIMYM is doing is called a portmanteau - the blending of two words to create a new one with a combined meaning.
Referring to blended words as portmanteaus came from Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland. Carroll coined an impressive number of terms in his poem "Jabberwocky" (in addition to giving me recurring nightmares during the length of my chlidhood, thanks in large part to the 1985 CBS live-action adaptation). The term "portmanteau" itself is self-illustrative: it's derived from the French compound porte, meaning "to hang," and manteau, meaning "coat" -- a coat hanger.
Two examples of Carroll's portmanteau words in "Jabberwocky" (courtesy of Wikipedia):
"Slithy," meaning both "lithe" and "slimy"
"‘Mimsy," meaning both "flimsy" and "miserable"
Just a little food for thought for ya. Foodthought. Thood. Fought. That doesn't work.
Smands