Portmanteau: a word formed by blending sounds from two or more words and combining their meanings. All the cool kids are doing it now but that doesn’t mean it’s good, right?
Hijacking perfectly good words
Take ‘neutraceuticals’ for example. It combines two perfectly good words into one dismal one.
- Nutrient: a chemical that an organism needs to live and grow.
- Pharmaceutical: chemical substances intended for use in medical diagnosis, cure, treatment, or prevention of disease.
- Neutraceutical: supplements that are “not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease”, but designed to promote ‘wellness’.
So nutraceuticals are in fact, neither nutri nor ceutical.
More frenemies
- Bromance: brother, romance – a platonic friendship between two men
- Frenemy: friend, enemy – an enemy disguised as a friend or to a friend who is also a rival
- Staycation: stay, vacation – a holiday spent at home
- Twi-hards : Twilight, Die-hard – used to describe fans of the Twilight series
- Refudiate: repudiate and refute, coined by Sarah Palin
- Octodamus: octopus, Nostradamus- used to describe Paul the psychic octopus
- Insania: insanity, mania – coined by Peter Andre
- Scandal-gate: (any scandal, Watergate)
- Gleek: Glee,geek – fans of the TV show Glee
- Bridezilla: bride, Godzilla- a demanding bride-to-be
- Brangelina: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie
- Mockumentary: mock, documentary
- Guesstimate: guess, estimate
- Scrooge: screw, gouge – coined by Charles Dickens
- Squiggle: squirm, wiggle
- Chortle: chuckle, snort – coined by Lewis Carroll
- Portmanteau: from the French porte (carry),manteau (coat) – hence a coat hook
- Lipsmackinthirstquenchinacetastinmotivatingoodbuzzin-cooltalkinhighwalkinfastlivinevergivincoolfizzin Pepsi’s used this 100-letter portmanteau in their 1973 TV and film advertising
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I really like guesstimate. Do it all the time
There’s a difference between some of the slang words that are humorous like bridezilla, and the effort of commerical companies to shape the way people think, like nutraceuticals – a real newspeak.
For some reason, when asked to invent a name for a company most people will create a portmanteau word that describes what the company does. Usually, the result is badgly (bad and ugly).
Badgly is a polite way of say fugly, isn’t it!
What a brilliant post!
I too am tired of all the twords (two-word words)