Friday, November 18, 2011

Compound Fracture of The Mind-Portmanteau

If you take remedial reading classes, and I know all of you do, you may learn that that terms  compound words refers to words like breakfast, launchpad, dustcart, switchblade, or any other single word that combines two words. There may be something insightful or interesting in exploring such words, but I'll  be damned if I can find it.

No, as of late, my unwholesome obsessions have been on the combination word-which is hardly an authoritative or official term, (No Merriam Webster backing here, but can't I make a word and give it to the urban dictionary?) but for my purposes it refers to words that combine parts of two words. For example, think of the word liger, which refers to the offspring of a tigers and lions.  This list I've been able to come up with is as follows:
                        1 jorts
                        2 skort
                        3 brunch
                        4 spork

These are ugly words. They sound like the names of northern European men as recalled by American women who want on vacations so many years ago and had summer trysts with enchanting, accented men, but I digress.
 Ahh, I've thought of another one, but it sounds more like an African name to me: "chillaxin," you know,  the pointless word the kids use to indicate that they are either chilling or relaxing? I suppose these words may have the purposes, but I'm dragging my heels while being pulled forward by the inevitable forward progress of Father Time. It is, unfortunately, most difficult to bury your head in the sand while being hauled down the trail.

Addendum: I'm not being modest or self effacing (I'm too insecure for that) when I tell you that most of my friends are more intelligent than I am. I consdier myself slightly more intelligent than the average American, which may not be saying much. Apparently the word I've been awkwardly fumbling for is portmanteau- this is the word refers to combinations of two differen word sounds into one word. I could revise this entry, but this is just goverment work for now.

2 comments:

  1. I COULD posit this question to Google, but I'd rather flaunt my ignorance here...
    What does "jorts" mean?

    ReplyDelete