Portmanteau Definition
A portmanteau or portmanteau word is a linguistic blend
of words, in which parts of multiple words or their
phones (sounds) are combined into a new word, as in
smog, coined by blending smoke and fog, or motel, from
motor and hotel. In linguistics, a portmanteau is
defined as a single morph that represents two or more
morphemes.
The definition overlaps with the grammatical term
contraction, but contractions are formed from words that
would otherwise appear together in sequence, such as do
and not to make don't, whereas a portmanteau word is
formed by combining two or more existing words that all
relate to a singular concept. A portmanteau also differs
from a compound, which does not involve the truncation
of parts of the stems of the blended words. For
instance, starfish is a compound, not a portmanteau, of
star and fish; whereas a hypothetical portmanteau of
star and fish might be stish. |
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