Portmanteau:
A word that fuses together two words to make a new word; like Animatronics for Animation and Electronics.
It was brought up while my brother and I were gmail chatting with each other. We have a terrible habit of taking one word, latching on to it, and using it with another word to make what my stepsister once called “psychobabble”.
For instance, please to read an excerpt from our “chat”:
juxtaposition.arena: isn't it called a portmanteau or some shit?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmanteau
I'm smart
me: Frankenword! Portmanteau!
juxtaposition.arena: Carl!
me: oh no...FrankenCarl! Port! Mantu!
juxtaposition.arena: I'm not playing. Mantu! 10 below 20 Port!
me: Me neither, I'm working. Frank! Carl! Get the Portman too!
juxtaposition.arena: Natalie Portman!
Now granted, Carl is from way back, a couple of Christmas’ ago, but he always seems to show up in our portmanteauing game.
This is how it works with us and we’ve never been able to stop, and can do it for hours and hours, always making us giggle like schoolchildren.
It came up because I’m reading “Motherless Brooklyn” about a lowly, orphaned detective who has Tourettes. It’s a crazy book, but he’s portmanteauing all the time. And its frightening to see how similar it is to the psychobabble of me and my brother.
Maybe I shouldn’t have posted this.
My brother would be embarassed.
Maybe I should show a picture of him
2 comments:
motherless brooklyn is a great book.
I love it, almost done and I'm kinda sad that I am.
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