Short forms: creating portmanteau words

People have always looked for inventive ways to shorten vocabulary — and to make it more precise. Lewis Carroll loved to create new words and to play with old ones. The author coined the word portmanteau to describe words that have been “cut and pasted” together to form new words. And people are still cutting and pasting today. (See Sarah Palin's recent portmanteau.)

Portmanteau words appear in Carroll's novel Through The Looking Glass. Humpty Dumpty, a talkative character, uses “slithy”, a word that Alice, the young girl who has gone through the looking glass, doesn’t understand. Humpty Dumpty explains it to her:

"Well, 'slithy' means 'lithe and slimy'. ... You see, it's like a portmanteau — there are two meanings packed into one word."

Although the word “slithy” isn’t used in everyday English today, another portmanteau word that Carroll created is: “chortle”. It’s a combination of “chuckle” and “snort” — which perfectly describes the sound some people make when they laugh. I know I do.

"Portmanteau" is also a portmanteau. It comes from the French portemanteau, a compound formed from porter (to carry) and manteau (cloak).

Some portmanteau words are now so common that many native speakers have probably forgotten their origins. How many could tell you that "smog" comes from "smoke" + "fog"?

In this exercise, you can find out if you can create common portmanteau words. 

Deborah Capras