Quick: Can you guess what two words combine to make the new term cremains? How about cronut? Verizon? Popsicle? Muppet? Bitcoin?
Yeah, some are more obvious than others — and we’ll get to all of these shortly.
In the meantime, let’s begin this 51st installment of Webb’s “Weird Words” by pointing out that terms like brunch and smog (or even such lesser-knowns as jeggings and banjolele) are known as blends — because they mix parts of two other words.
As we noted last week, there are literally hundreds of blends in English. And, thanks to author Lewis Carroll — who helped pioneer the idea in both “Jabberwocky” and Through the Looking-Glass — this is called a portmanteau. (That’s actually Humpty-Dumpty’s term, borrowing it from a two-section carrying case that folds up into one.)
Indeed, blends or portmanteaux are so widespread in English that “Weird Words” will need two or three more columns to cover them all.
Here are more for this week:
In the area of weird or surprising, we have cremains, which combines cremate and remains to describe the ashes left from this process. Then there’s the more recent glamping, which combines glamor and camping; it refers to those increasingly common high-end outdoor trips — perhaps those on which one hauls half the household along for comfort. (In which case, one questions the point of “getting away from it all” — if you have to bring all of it with you anyway!)
As for banjolele — yes, that is a thing, and you probably guessed its component words: banjo and ukulele. This odd-sounding instrument will be familiar to fans of Britain’s delightful writer P. G. Wodehouse; his well-known valet, Jeeves, distinctly disapproves of all sounds emanating from this contraption — especially as played by the butler’s bird-brained boss, Bertie Wooster.
Bitcoin seems obvious — except that even the first syllable here is a blend, joining binary and digit.
Contrail, the term for that fading white stream left in the sky by jets, combines its obvious final syllable to the first in condensation.
Jeggings mixes jeans and leggings. And Pennsyltucky is an obvious and facetious blend describing the central part of our state. I won’t venture to guess whether any of us actually live in redneck territory — though you might be one if your mom climbs a tree faster than you; if you’ve ever had a V-8 engine in your bathtub; or if anyone in your family has died right after shouting, “Hey, watch this!”
Other blended place-names: Mexicali (Mexico and California); Texarkana, adjoining twin cities in Texas and Arkansas; and Tanzania, an African nation named for the two countries that united to form it: Tanganyika and Zanzibar.
Several others in my opening paragraph are trademarks, so let’s cover those together here:
Some of the more obvious might be Netflix (internet + flicks), Amtrak (America + track); Popsicle (lollipop and icicle); and Travelocity, a terrific coinage which needs no explanation.
Perhaps more surprising: Muppet mixes puppet and marionette. Verizon blends the Latin veritas (“truth”) with horizon. (Though God help us if a tech-giant really represents our “truth horizon.”) Slightly more sensible is the computer company Lenovo, named for the Latin novo (“new”) and legend. Along the same lines, a wiki is a collaboratively edited online source; one that styles itself as an encyclopedia might well use the blend Wikipedia (which, incidentally, has a very authoritative list of portmanteaux — and yes, that is one proper plural for that term). Pokemon mixes pocket and monsters; the Garmin navigational company was named for its founders, Gary Burrell and Min Kao; and of course, TV’s once-mighty Desilu Studios combines the names of Lucille Ball and her husband, Desi Arnaz.
Which brings us to a few additional blends for famous couples: Bennifer for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez; Brangelina for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie; and one I hadn’t heard till I researched this piece: TomKat, for Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.
And regarding cronut: You can probably guess this, but as a further hint: I’m out of space and will save food-related blends for next week.
In the meantime, I hope you won’t mind another redneck gag: The toothbrush must have been invented in West Viriginia.
Otherwise, it would be called a teethbrush.
