Portmanteaus

A portmanteau is a combination of two or more words that produces their combined meaning.  Common examples include brunch (breakfast + lunch), cankle (calf + ankle), and smog (smoke + fog (I didn’t realise this until I read it on Wikipedia, which is another (wiki + encyclopedia))).  Sorry for all the parentheses.

So basically, portmanteau is a big extravagant word for a concept you have known and used your whole life.  This makes it an excellent addition to you arsenal of conversation prompts with people you’ve just met, provided they are pretentious blog reading folk (as in the kind of people who feel it important to call this ‘(‘ a ‘parenthesis’ and not a ‘bracket’ (and to know that the plural is parentheses)).

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’ve got a particular soft spot for banoffee (banana + toffee (both the thing and the word)), and gunt (gut +cunt (just the word, definitely not the thing which is in itself a somehwat of a soft spot).


But the best portmanteaus often get blurted out somewhat unconsciously.  A couple of the best I’ve been witness to are:

‘Geogressive’ (geographic + aggressive): adj. Aggressive about matters of geography.

  My geogressive friend fucking hates coming to Newtown.

Or

When contested on the subject of barometric pressure, Prof. Brown was known to violently attack his colleagues.  He was most geogressive.

‘Shitower’ (Shit(ter) + Shower) : n. A small bathroom in which the toilet and the shower are within the same cubic meter.  Found in boats and small Hong Kong apartments.

v.  The act of shitting and showering simultaneously.

Emma’s shitower was never quite the same after Tim stayed the night.

OR

Taboo or not, there is an undeniable convenience in having a shitower.

Portmanteau, originally a French word for suitcase, is actually a portmanteau itself (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmanteau#Origin), but in English this gets a bit lost.  So to get ironic you can portmanteau it up a bit yourself.  There can be shortmanteaus, sportmantueas.  In fact these would be excellent categories for the portmanteau game you will play with your new friends over a sticky date pudding and a few bottles of dessert wine. 

‘How about you get bonus points for a triple worder?’

‘As in a trortmanteau?’

....dead silence....

The best concoctions from the night can be framed and placed on the portmantlepiece.

Okay, so this is getting a little far into the territory of the postmanteau.

So if this is new knowledge to you, I hope it brings you closer to the aforementioned evening of linguistic silliness.

Conversely, if you sense I’m not the first to blog about the topic, then I confess, it has been done before.  So I’ll pay homage to Milkybeer, my portmentor.

Sorry again for all the parenthetical explanations (parenthexplanations?......nah)