ridonkulous!
okay, so this is definitely not a completely original post...but i read this article in the seattle PI today and it made me so excited i just had to share what i learned....
i know my fascination with words is a little bit strange -- but seriously, vocab is a-mazing! so have you ever heard of portmanteaus before? well i hadn't, not until today. they are recorded as first being introduced by william shakespeare in sonnet 63 where he created the word 'trauaild' by combining 'traveled' and 'travailed.' brilliant! but, of course i probably would have had no idea 'trauaild' was an extraordinary word, and not just some strange olde english term -- seeing as almost every other word in shakespeare's work is foreign to me. (sadly) hmmmm.
so anyways, portmanteaus became more widely recognized by the literary genius, good old lewis carroll, when alice gets a lesson in wonderland from humpty dumpty who describes jabberwocky as 'slithy' -- 'well, slithy means lithe and slimy' he said. and so began the trend that we all know so well today:
brunch, motel, smog, metrosexual, mandals, gaydar, chillax, slurve, crunk, bacne, frogurt, justache, jerd, streetball, badong, dancercise, sacrilicious (not sacrilege! -- homer simpson's combination of sacrilege and delicious. hmm), infomercial, bodacious, alphabet (who knew?! alpha + beta), pluot, simulcast, televangelist, mockumentary, tofurky, pixel (picture + element), brangelina, bollywood, dramedy, pokemon, nicorette, viagravation, pictionary, microsoft, frappucino, fantabulous, labradoodle, liger, guesstimate...
...in fact, 'portmanteau' is a portmanteau -- the combo of two french words:
'porter' (trans: to carry) + 'manteau' (trans: cloak) so, we decided shortening words and blending them together (blorphing) could be seen as 'carrying a cloak?!' hmmm. crazy french. anyways, i thought it was interesting.
i know my fascination with words is a little bit strange -- but seriously, vocab is a-mazing! so have you ever heard of portmanteaus before? well i hadn't, not until today. they are recorded as first being introduced by william shakespeare in sonnet 63 where he created the word 'trauaild' by combining 'traveled' and 'travailed.' brilliant! but, of course i probably would have had no idea 'trauaild' was an extraordinary word, and not just some strange olde english term -- seeing as almost every other word in shakespeare's work is foreign to me. (sadly) hmmmm.
so anyways, portmanteaus became more widely recognized by the literary genius, good old lewis carroll, when alice gets a lesson in wonderland from humpty dumpty who describes jabberwocky as 'slithy' -- 'well, slithy means lithe and slimy' he said. and so began the trend that we all know so well today:
brunch, motel, smog, metrosexual, mandals, gaydar, chillax, slurve, crunk, bacne, frogurt, justache, jerd, streetball, badong, dancercise, sacrilicious (not sacrilege! -- homer simpson's combination of sacrilege and delicious. hmm), infomercial, bodacious, alphabet (who knew?! alpha + beta), pluot, simulcast, televangelist, mockumentary, tofurky, pixel (picture + element), brangelina, bollywood, dramedy, pokemon, nicorette, viagravation, pictionary, microsoft, frappucino, fantabulous, labradoodle, liger, guesstimate...
...in fact, 'portmanteau' is a portmanteau -- the combo of two french words:
'porter' (trans: to carry) + 'manteau' (trans: cloak) so, we decided shortening words and blending them together (blorphing) could be seen as 'carrying a cloak?!' hmmm. crazy french. anyways, i thought it was interesting.
posted by r.m. @ 1:34 AM
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