Blends
A
blend is when two words are put together to make one. Sometimes this is the
deliberate invention of an
individual: Lewis Carroll put snort
together with chuckle to get chortle: Calloo
callay he chortled in his joy. Yet, regardless of who actually invents them
, blending is one of the processes at work in the historical development of the
language. Some of the ways of
creating blends are by:
-
overlapping: the two words share a common middle, filmania,
cartune, netiquette
-
clipping: parts of the words are left out:
1 whole word plus part of a
second: fanzine (fan + (maga)zine,
babelicious (babe + (de)licious), travelogue (travel + (dia)logue
2 part of first word
plus whole of second: Eurasia,
alcopop, Britpop
3
first bit of first word, last bit of second: smog (smo(ke)+ (f)og), electrocute (electr(ic)
+ (exe)cute), camcorder (cam(era) + (re)corder, brunch (bre(akfast) + (l)unch),
spam (sp(iced) + (h)am), chunnel cccccc, heliport cccccccccc
4 both first bits: agitprop (agit(are) + prop(agenda)), modem (mod(ulator) + dem(odulator))
5 Others: blog
((we)blog), podcast ((i)pod (broad)cast)
-
clipping at boundaries: Oxbridge
(Ox(ford) + (Cam)bridge),
-
clipping and overlapping: slithy,
motel (motor + hotel),
-
imperfect overlapping: chump
(possibly ch(unk) + (st)ump)
Blends
are also frequently produced spontaneously in speech, such
as the follwoinge examples discussed by psycholinguists: That’s
torrible (terrible + horrible), Have you ever flivven (flown + driven), Grastly
(grizzly + ghastly). Like spoonerisms, psycholinguist use blends as evidence
that the different components of the speech production process can get
out of step; deciding which of two words to say leaves one effectively
using a blend of both.
Main
source: Algeo