Whipping Up Words

I have been writing a lot about literature and history over the past few months.  This week, I'm reveling in my other true love: words.  If you enjoy this column, I invite you to check out "What's Your Favorite Word?" from the August 24, 2024, issue of Mind Travel.

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In his song "I'm Still a Guy," Brad Paisley sings, "When you see a lake, you think picnics, / and I see a largemouth up under that log."  I'll have much more to say about the wonderful world of country music lyrics next month, but for now let me riff off these lyrics and say, "When you hear the word 'stagflation,' you think economics, and I think about word formation."

We all see the world through our own personal lenses, and one of mine is the linguistic lens.  I love words, and I like to think about what they mean, where they come from, how they work.

Introducing Blends . . .

Stagflation is an example of something called a blend or a portmanteau.  Each of these terms provides some clue to the brand of word formation at work here.  A blend, of course, is something with multiple components, and a portmanteau is a kind of luggage with two compartments.  When people form this kind of word, they typically combine pieces of two words--in this case stagnation and inflation.  A key aspect of this process is the inclusion of mere pieces of words. 

You probably are already familiar with compound words, which consist of entire words combined to create new meanings: light + house gives us lighthouse, click + bait makes clickbait, and free + style forms freestyle.  I suppose someone could have combined all of stagnation and all of inflation to create a compound word, stagnationinflation, but what we have instead is a shorter word with a piece of each word: "stag" from stagnation and "flation" from inflation.

English has many blends, including brunch, staycation, Pictionary, mockumentary, frenemy, spork, Chunnel, infomercial, and ginormous.  In each of these examples, you probably have little trouble identifying the words being "blended."  Brunch, of course, is a combination of breakfast and lunch--a logical formation, given that brunch typically takes place around the late morning and early afternoon and includes items typically served for breakfast, as well as items served for lunch.  (The very idea that some foods should be eaten for breakfast and others for lunch and dinner strikes me as kind of funny, but I'll stay in my linguistics lane.)

Handy Words for Dogs and More

I would be willing to bet that I could name some words that you didn't even know were blends.  You might realize that smog came from smoke and fog, but did you know that motel came from motor and hotel or that motorcade came from motor and cavalcade?  Here's one that I didn't know: pixel came from picture and element.

Blending has been especially popular among people creating the names of dog breeds.  We have labradoodles, puggles, maltipoos, chiweenies, and morkies.  Now, I know a lot more about language than I do about dog breeding.  In fact, I know nothing at all about dog breeding, but is it possible that the breeders are choosing the dogs to breed based simply on their names?  I mean, why settle for a Golden Shepherd when you could have a cockapoo?

The Ginormous Appeal of Blends

Aside from being blends, many of these words have one thing in common.  They're fun!  Just try saying them out loud.  All together now: spork, staycation, Pictionary, puggles, cockapoos.  The poet William Wordsworth warned us, "We murder to dissect," but I love to analyze this kind of thing.  (I'm an English professor, OK?  It's what I do.)

I've thought a bit about blends--more than the vast majority of the population, I'm guessing--and I have an idea of what makes them fun. 

I have a soft spot for the kind of humor that requires us to work a little.  The fun of this kind of humor, I think, comes partly from the satisfaction that we take in figuring out the joke.  (For more on this topic, see my article on Bob Newhart in The Conversation.)

Blends require some figuring out, typically more than those boring compound words, such as fireplace, which is--you guessed it--a place for a fire, and blackbird, which is, well, a kind of black bird. 

A blend such as mockumentary, on the other hand, requires us to think a little: it's a documentary, but it mocks this kind of film.  A staycation is a kind of vacation, but it's different from what we usually think of when we think of a vacation because we stay at home.  These blends are especially fun because the new parts rhyme with the parts that have been discarded.

Because of the subtle little joke built into them, blends such as these seem to come with an unspoken "Get it?"  "I skipped lunch and wound up snapping at my partner.  I guess I'm getting hangry.  (Get it?)"

I Give This Blend a . . . Perfect 10

The appeal of blends was not lost on my students.  For many years, I taught a grammar course in which I had students make up words and then analyze them.  Students coined a lot of blends.  Some of them are, hands down, the best blends I have seen anywhere.  I think you will agree when I share a few of them here.

One student, for example, came up with the word pontifirate, a blend of pontificate and rate.  This word not only sounds fun, but also has a fun definition, one that captures a common phenomenon.  The student wrote:

This word refers to the often pointless practice of numerically rating any and every object or phenomenon in life. 

The student even provided a couple of examples, including this one:

The Arctic Monkeys' new album succeeds where legions of post-punk experimentalists such as Babyshambles have fallen short.  I give the Monkeys' new release a 9.2, while Babyshambles earns only a 5.3.

If you have ever stroked your chin and slapped an 8 on a Netflix series or three stars on a babycam, you have pontifirated.  (Can you spot the other blend in that last sentence?)

My all-time favorite blend coined by a student (or anyone else) is one that combines a fun-sounding word and a phenomenon well known to many parents:

Redolescence . . . A time of life when teenage boys feel the compulsion to use excessive amounts of fragrant sprays and colognes in misguided attempts to mask the teenage boy smell and attract girls in one fell swoop. [Redolent + Adolescence]

I said blends were fun.  I think this delightful word makes the case better than any word I've seen.

I wish I were still in touch with these students so I could tell them I am celebrating their words many years after they coined them.

A Popular Form of Word Formation

I used to think it was remarkable how common blends were among my students' coinages, but Matt Norton, writing for Cambridge University Press & Assessment in 2017, says:

To find out how many new blend words are made each year (only a rough estimate), we looked at new dictionary word lists and counted the blends in them: about 20-25% of all new words in the Cambridge new words list are blend words.

This estimate helps make my case for the appeal of blends.  People like to have fun.  Blends are fun, so people like to blend when they create new words.

Now, if you happen to be one of those rare killjoys who favor those button-down compound words, well, I have one thing to say to you.

Chillax.