Word Play: The Growing Popularity of the Portmanteau

The Wikipedia article written about the origins of the Portmanteau notes that Lewis Carroll is credited for creating the modern usage of the term. In Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice words from the Jabberwocky, saying, "Well, slithy means lithe and slimy...You see it's like a portmanteau - there are two meanings packed up into one word." Portmanteau, from Middle French words "porter" (to carry) and "manteau" (a coat or cover), previously referred to a large traveling bag or suitcase with two compartments, hence the linguistic idea of fusing two words and their meanings into one term. While "Portmanteau" is rarely used to refer to a suitcase in English anymore, it has instead come to mean a term which fuses two words in order to create a new word that carries with it a new concept or meaning.

Portmanteaus - What They Are and What They Are Not

Portmanteaus create new meaning by bridging together conceptually separate but interlinked words into a new word that expresses the idea. Some portmanteaus are very simple, like breakfast and lunch becoming 'brunch'. Smoke and fog are blended and mixed into 'smog'. As such, the terms are not meant to be a simple contraction of two words such as 'don't' (do and not), but rather a marriage of terms designed to express a new meaning or concept.

New concepts are springing up with every technological innovation and decade, and Portmanteaus serve an important societal and linguistic role by bringing into being many new thoughts, ideas or fads within the culture. A good example of this phenomenon is the fact that Portmanteaus often pop up to describe celebrity couples and the status of their relationship. Just a year back, nearly every magazine on the news stand had at least one mention of the relationship of 'Tomkat' - Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, as well as 'Brangelina' - Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. And consider a frequently used term that many people may not even realize is in fact a Portmanteau: the popular term 'workaholic', which combines 'work' and 'alcoholic' to birth a new term with a different connotation. Those Emoticons on your Internet message browser? Emoticons are simply Emotional Icons that are best described with the single word Emoticons.

Still, how do Portmanteaus spring up in the first place?

Giving Birth to a Portmanteau

Languages change over time within their concurrent societies, and change within a language's inflections and structure is more often than not due to specific needs that arise within the culture itself. In our culture, we are faced with tumultuous changes in almost every facet of our lives. Technological innovations are changing the way we work at a rapid pace and stereotypical thinking crumbles when matched against our globally competitive world. Yet people strive to maintain structured lives in the face of this changeable adversity. In this sense, the growth of the use of Portmanteaus can be considered a coping mechanism for bridging between the need for structure and the need to express a new but necessary idea. Contractions and acronyms provide a shorthand for understanding new words or ideas but Portmanteaus actually stretch the reality of what's already there between two separate terms and facilitate the birth of a new word that combines the best of two meanings into one.

A World Without Limits

Is there a limit to the changes that our language can take? Candance Murphy, a reporter for the Oakland Tribune, once wrote that she felt that "as a society we've been portmanteau-crazy for the past couple of years". Bending and reshaping language and the meaning of individual words is usually a natural process that gradually occurs over the timeline of a given culture. Technology and cultural changes have sped up the process of coining new words because our culture has a need for rapid adaptation at this point in time. But perhaps a most interesting question is, just how far will the English language bend to accommodate the accelerated demands of our society, and within how short a period of time? In the spirit of, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?", does the idea emerge before the word or does the word help to bring forth the idea? Or was it the Microcomputer and the Software now called Microsoft?

References:

Murphy, C. (2006). Manhandling the Language Enough to Make You Snarky. retrieved July 5, 2007 from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20061112/ai_n16841896

Wikipedia (2007). Portmanteau retrieved July 3, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hybrid_word_puns_used_in_pop_culture