Blends Are Increasing

Abstract

IN THIS ERA of word creation, greater than ever before because of the many new inventions, discoveries, and developments in all fields, we find that blends are on the increase. New situations, new objects, new processes, new experiences of all types demand new words. Before the middle of the nineteenth century this type of word formation was somewhat rare. The usual citations one finds are Edmund Spenser's wrizzled (probably wrinkled + frizzled), Shakespeare's glaze (glare + gaze), and Lewis Carroll's slithy (slimy + lithe), chortle (chuckle + snort), snark (snake + shark), and galumph (gallop + triumph). These telescoped words, especially the humorous creations, were formerly referred to as portmanteau words because of Lewis Carroll's explanation in Through the Looking-Glass that they were formed by fitting two words into one, as clothes are fitted into a portmanteau or traveling bag. Linguists, however, more often refer to these words as blends. This process is in frequent use today, especially by magazine and newspaper writers and in forming trade names, as evidenced in the list below.1 Blends occur in many fields; those reported here are distributed among the following fields (with the number in each field in parentheses): fashion (60); sports, travel, and entertainment (54); science and technology (44); air and space (5); home (37); political issues (15); education (3); art (7); high fidelity (13); youth (8); drug addiction (2); sex (7); health (5); miscellaneous (45). One of the great producers of blends is Time magazine. From this list of 306, 47 are from Time. These coinages often blend the first sounds of one word with the last sounds of another if some element of sound is common to both, as in the case of bullionaire (bullion + billionaire) or rat-a-tattoo (rat-a-tat + tattoo). In some cases a complete word is incorporated in the new creation, as in ambisextrous (sex + ambidextrous), soundsational (sound + sensational), rendezwoo (rendezvous + woo). A combining form is sometimes used instead of a word, as in celebriana (celebrity + -ana) and Thermotainer (thermo+ retainer). At times the first syllable or middle syllable of a word is employed, as illustrated by

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