I’ve only got one word for you portmanteau addicts | Joel Golby
A little party trick I use to bore girls is to pepper them with exceptionally dry factlets about the English language. It involves me saying things like: "Yo hey what up: did you know the reason we have a different word for the flesh of an animal and the animal itself is because of the French invasion of 1066, when French became the language of the courts, and they made many decadent boeuf dishes?" I wiggle closer and say: "Did you know there is a direct line between the plague and the invention of the aspirational middle class and the invention of thesauruses? That the plague basically caused thesauruses?" Lean right in and say: "Do you know about William Labov's department store study, because it is actually very interesting?" This approach, I don't mind telling you, has a 100% success record - at boring them.
But I've found my niche now, Guardian readers, in you, and you cannot pretend you have a boyfriend or sprint away to an awaiting Uber so let's talk about portmanteaus, shall we? Portmanteau words - imagine I am sliding a single vodka-coke towards you right now - portmanteau words are two words shunted together, like a cut-and-shut car. They are fun.
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