This article is about a type of word. For the method of teaching how to read, see synthetic phonics.
"Portmanteau" redirects here. For other uses, see Portmanteau (disambiguation).
In linguistics, a blend—sometimes known, perhaps more narrowly, as a blend word, lexical blend, portmanteau (/pɔːrtˈmæntoʊ/ⓘport-MAN-toh or /ˌpɔːr(t)mænˈtoʊ/POR(T)-man-TOH; pl. portmanteaus or portmanteaux[1]), or portmanteau word—is a word formed, usually intentionally, by combining the sounds and meanings of two or more words.[2][3][4] English examples include smog, coined by blending smoke and fog,[3][5] as well as motel, from motor (motorist) and hotel.[6] The component word fragments within blends are called splinters.
A blend is similar to a contraction, but contractions are formed, usually non-intentionally, from words whose sounds gradually drift together over time due to them commonly appearing together in sequence, such as do not naturally becoming don't (phonologically, /duːnɒt/ becoming /doʊnt/). A blend also differs from a compound, which fully preserves the stems of the original words. The 1973 Introduction to Modern English Word-Formation explains that "In words such as motel, boatel and Lorry-Tel, hotel is represented by various shorter substitutes – ‑otel, ‑tel, or ‑el – which I shall call splinters. Words containing splinters I shall call blends".[7][n 1] 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.[8]
^"Definition of PORTMANTEAU". 18 March 2024.
^Garner's Modern American Usage Archived 27 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine, p. 644.
^ ab"Portmanteau". Merriam-Webster Offline Dictionary. Archived from the original on 9 May 2008. Retrieved 21 June 2008.
^"Portmanteau word". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. Archived from the original on 26 November 2007. Retrieved 21 June 2008.
^"portmanteau word". Webster's New World College Dictionary. Cleveland: Wiley. 2010. ISBN 978-0-7645-7125-1.
^"Portmanteau word". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 15 December 2013. Retrieved 23 August 2013.
^Valerie Adams, An Introduction to Modern English Word-Formation, Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1973; ISBN 0-582-55042-4, p. 142.
^Fandrych, Ingrid (10 November 2008). "Submorphemic elements in the formation of acronyms, blends and clippings". Lexis (2). doi:10.4000/lexis.713.
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In linguistics, a blend—sometimes known, perhaps more narrowly, as a blendword, lexical blend, portmanteau (/pɔːrtˈmæntoʊ/ port-MAN-toh or /ˌpɔːr(t)mænˈtoʊ/...
mixer or blender. Blend may also refer to: Blendword, a word formed from parts of other words Blend (album), a 1996 album by BoDeans Blend (cigarette), a...
or head injury. Linguistics portal Aureation Backslang Blendword Language planning Nonce word Mondegreen Morphology (linguistics) Phono-semantic matching...
forming a word from two or more letters that represent the sounds of a wordBlending (music), a technique used in instrument playing Blending (vocal technique)...
psychokinesis. The term is a blendword of psi (in the sense of "psychic phenomena") and the -onics from electronics. The word "psionics" began as, and always...
A lexical blend is a complex word typically made of two word fragments. For example: smog is a blend of smoke and fog brunch is a blend of breakfast...
Mansplaining (a blendword of man and the informal form splaining of the gerund explaining) is a pejorative term meaning "(for a man) to comment on or...
western Europe: Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The name is a Blendword formed from joining the first few letters of each country's name and was...
calque (/kælk/) or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used...
apathetic anthropomorphic egg yolk. The name "Gudetama" is a portmanteau or blendword of the Japanese words for lazy (ぐでぐで, gudegude) and egg (たまご, tamago)...
from Sandoval de la Reina, Spain, earlier called Sannoval, which is a blendword of Latin saltus (meaning 'grove' or 'wood') and Latin novalis (meaning...
compound word is actually a type of blendword. Like other blends, clipped compounds may be made of two or more components. However, a blend may have...
the masculine (phallus) in the construction of meaning. The term is a blendword of the older terms phallocentrism (focusing on the masculine point of...
Afterschool Summoners (東京放課後サモナーズ, Tōkyō Hōkago Samonāzu), known also by the blendword Housamo (放サモ, derived from Tōkyō Hōkago Samonāzu), is an F2P role-playing...
be difficult to view and use on a mobile device." The protologism is a blendword of "mobile" and "Armageddon" because the change "could cause massive disruption...
The name of the horse is a word play—a blendword or a portmanteau—a combination of Rosinante (Rocinante) and the Finnish word for raisin, rusina. In the...
as a fallback Blendword – Word consisting of two words put together List of portmanteaus Clipping (morphology) – Reduction of a word to one of its parts...
The memtransistor (a blendword from Memory Transfer Resistor) is an experimental multi-terminal passive electronic component that might be used in the...
Altermodern, a blendword defined by Nicolas Bourriaud, is an attempt at contextualizing art made in today's global context as a reaction against standardisation...
Rangel, Marisa Orth and Drica Moraes. The show's title is a Portuguese blendword formed from the phrase "assessor de porra [or porcaria] nenhuma" (literally...
Westsplaining (a blendword of west and the informal form -splaining of the gerund explaining) is a pejorative term that represents criticism of Western...
toe. The form hallux (genitive, hallucis) currently in use is however a blendword of the aforementioned forms. Compare pollex, the equivalent term for the...
intrinsically. The activating complexes are together called tenase. Tenase is a blendword of "ten" and the suffix "-ase", which means, that the complex activates...
agreement expired and was officially introduced the Finlux brand, which was a blendword of "Finlandia" and "Luxor"; this was the first time that Finlux had been...
רוני ליבוביץ) is a convicted Israeli bank robber, nicknamed Ofnobank (a blendword of the words "motorcycle" and "bank" in Hebrew), due to his reported theft...
Spice mixes are blended spices or herbs. When a certain combination of herbs or spices is called for in a recipe, it is convenient to blend these ingredients...
the word "Vril" came to be associated with "life-giving elixirs". The best known use of "Vril" in this context is in the name of Bovril (a blendword of...
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