A portmanteau is created by combining two or more words or morphemes to create a new word with a meaning connected to the original words. It is similar to a contraction but uses words that do not naturally appear together. Nouns are commonly used, and Lewis Carroll first used the term. Anyone can create a portmanteau by combining two words or parts of two words together. Examples include “smog” and “Internet.”
It’s actually quite simple for anyone to create a portmanteau, although those who want to create one that is truly noteworthy or that can become part of the general lexicon should pay attention. A portmanteau is created by simply combining two or more words, or morphemes that are part of words, together to create a new word that has a meaning connected to the original words. Unlike a contraction, however, these words would not immediately appear together otherwise in a sentence. Simple portmanteau examples include words like “smog,” from “smoke” and “fog;” or “Internet”, from “international” and “network”.
A portmanteau, also sometimes called a “blend,” is a word constructed by combining two or more words together. Parts of words, rather than whole words, can also be used to make portmanteaus, although these parts are often complete morphemes that make the original words identifiable. In some respects similar to a contraction, a portmanteau is formed using words that do not naturally appear together within a sentence. A contraction is formed by combining two words that would appear together, such as “can” and “not” in “can’t;” however, portmanteaus use words like “smoke” and “fog” that would not naturally appear one after the other in most sentences.
Almost any type of word can be used to create a portmanteau, although nouns are some of the most commonly used words and adjectives and adverbs are common in some settings. The term “portmanteau” was first used to describe this type of word by Lewis Carroll, who used numerous portmanteaus in his poem Jabberwocky. Most of these portmanteaus, however, were created by adjectives and adverbs together, such as “furious” and “fuming” being combined together to make “fromous”. Portmanteaus created from these types of words often end up sounding like meaningless combinations of sounds, while nouns can form more recognizable words.
The easiest way to create a portmanteau is by combining two words or parts of two words. “Internet” and “smog” are mere examples of such portmanteaus, although other words such as “brunch”, from “breakfast” and “lunch” and “edutainment”, from “education” and “entertainment”, are also created by such simple combinations. Anyone can create this type of portmanteau, simply by combining two words or parts of two words together, such as an “ordeal” which causes “boredom” to be referred to as “boredom”. These words are often more catchy or memorable if the sounds created resemble the original words, which are often seen in celebrity couple names that are created as combinations of the names of each person in a relationship.
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