Talk:Portmanteau

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"Blend" is the same
The love that wikipedia has for the word "portmanteau" has been long noticed, as you can see scrolling back through the Talk archives - it's the topic of the first Talk item, a dozen years ago. I am one of those people who think "portmanteau" carries no meaning beyond the straightforward "blend" and, in the name of clarity, should not be used without good reason. I'm happy to say that Merriam-Webster, on their excellent blog, agrees :
 * Blend or portmanteau - you can use either.

That doesn't sound like agreement? Note this comment:
 * Portmanteau has a number of points in its favor. It sounds fancier than blend... it has the option of the exotic plural spelling portmanteaux; and it predates the pertinent use of blend by 40 years or more. It also, however, comes straight from the mouth of a naively fragile egg who's explaining to a confused seven-year-old what 'slithy' and 'mimsy' mean.

Blend it is, I say! - DavidWBrooks (talk) 21:14, 29 May 2018 (UTC)


 * According to another article, a blend word or a blend is a word formed from parts of two or more other words. What's more, all blends, named in the article, are also on the list of portmanteaus. Then, what is the difference between a portmanteau and blend? Is there any blend that is not a portmanteau, or any portmanteau that is not a blend? Vikom (talk) 00:34, 5 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Blend is the correct linguistic term for what is popularly (by laypeople who are not linguists) called portmanteau (word) or (occasionally) frankenword. The only unquestionably correct use of portmanteau in linguistics is the one referring to portmanteau morph(eme)s or portmanteau allomorphs. All the content specifically relating to blends should be moved from this article to Blend word. I've talked about this before. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:32, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Definition of "portmanteau morpheme"
Glottopedia (in German) provides a narrower definition as offered here: a portmanteau morpheme is, strictly speaking, only a morpheme which cannot be segmented anymore. This is clearly not the case for (say) doesn't, didn't, wouldn't etc., which can easily be subdivided into does, did, would (etc.) plus -n't /-nt/, a common allomorph of not. However, (say) German zum /tsʊm/ can also be divided into the morphs /tsʊ-/ (an allomorph of zu /tsuː/ also found in zur /tsʊ-r/) and /-m/ (an allomorph of dem /deːm/ which recurs in beim /baɪ-m/ and the more colloquial aufm /aʊf-m/), and therefore, it is not a true portmanteau morpheme (as argued in Glottopedia). German ins and ans are easy to segment into morphs as well. Glottopedia also does not consider German am and im unsegmentable, as it considers the segmentations a-m and i-m valid. Uncontroversial examples would be German war, sind, or English was, are, am, is, went, and presumably feet and took, and French au /oː/ (but not Italian or Spanish al /al/, which can be subdivided into /a/ plus /-l/ as found in del /de-l/). The Latin genitive singular ending -is, too, is a much better example than most of the contractions listed. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:06, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I'd suggest to merge all that is about blends (= "partmonteau" in common parlance, but not in linguistics) to Blend word (and acronyms to Acronym). The page that will contain the remaining material about genuine portmanteau morphemes could then be moved to Portmanteau (linguistics), and the current dab Portmanteau (disambiguation) to Portmanteau. The dab will thus become the primary landing page for the search "portmanteau", with two language-related entries:
 * Portmanteau (linguistics), a single morpheme carrying to functions or meanings
 * Portmanteau or blend word, a word formed by blending two or more distinct forms
 * –Austronesier (talk) 10:14, 29 June 2020 (UTC)


 * , I agree with the gist of what you're saying. But NB one thing on which I'd thought everyone agreed was the spelling, portm a nteau. Secondly, I think that the portmanteau of linguists -- for example, the "third person 's'" of English lexical verbs, into which 3rd person, singular and present (and arguably finite and indicative too) are packed -- is more often called (and considered) a "portmanteau morph" than a "portmanteau morpheme" (though I must concede that Google shows not so much difference between the two). -- Hoary (talk) 12:29, 29 June 2020 (UTC)


 * , you say: I'd suggest to merge all that is about blends (= "[portmanteau]" in common parlance, but not in linguistics) to Blend word. I wouldn't. A large percentage of what's here is unsourced, and a large percentage is about phenomena that sound a bit like blends but not very much like blends. Perhaps a better approach would be to ignore this article for now and work on improving and augmenting the article blend word -- of course working from, and citing, good sources. Incidentally, I don't have the relevant books with me right now (and I'm sleepy), but I remember that I was reading up on blends a few months ago and was struck by the different understandings among morphology texts of the term "blend". IIRC at least one would not call English frenemy a blend, because it incorporates one word (enemy) in its entirety. Now, it's not unusual to have an article about a fuzzy-edged subject, given a title whose definition is a matter of amicable dispute (e.g. film noir), but it's better to be aware of such problems when (re-)starting out. -- Hoary (talk) 13:01, 29 June 2020 (UTC)


 * "Portmanteau" is mostly used as a modifier, as in "portmanteau morph", "portmanteau morpheme", "portmanteau clitic", "portmanteau affix", or in phrases like "the suffix -X is a portmanteau that expresses ...". So a fuller title like Portmanteau morpheme or Portmanteau morph might be better. As for "portmanteau morph" vs. "portmanteau morpheme", we should chose the best "textbook definition". As an indivisible form, a portmanteu affix/clitic/functor is "a smallest meaning-carrying unit", i.e. a portmanteau morpheme; definitions that speak of portmanteau morphs identify morphemes as functional units. I'm fine with either approach, as long as it helps to make this page less fuzzy-edged.
 * Of course much of the material here won't survive the transfer if properly vetted. I haven't suggested that Blend word should be the dumping ground for all the fluff that has been dropped here over the years. So I think I'd start first with removing unsourced material. –Austronesier (talk) 13:12, 29 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Then how about this, : I concentrate on the article blend word (but skipping the material about Hebrew, as I neither can read Hebrew nor have the time to locate and digest references); you concentrate on portmanteaux; each of us also assists the other. I'm keener on blends than on portmanteau morph(eme)s/affixes/clitics, because I happen to possess a copy of Elisa Mattiello's excellent Extra-grammatical morphology in English, which devotes an entire chapter to blends. She has her own taxonomies of blends, but also considers and summarizes taxonomies by others. Of course it's a pity that her subject matter is ostensibly limited to English, but actually she does bring in some examples from elsewhere, and I should be able to add some myself. I also have a copy of Marchand's Categories and types of present-day English word-formation: this has only a couple of pages about blends, but this is enough for him to (annoyingly!) point out that the term has at times been used very freely indeed. (And yes, I have other sources too.) -- Hoary (talk) 02:33, 30 June 2020 (UTC)


 * That's a deal. The Hebrew material is easy to handle, since the reference is in English and only uses Latin transliterations; an editor has added the Hebrew script to the examples, which is ok per WP:BLUESKY, I guess. It might be interesting to have a look at clipped compounds too, and mention where these intersect with blend words. –Austronesier (talk) 10:43, 30 June 2020 (UTC)


 * , you won't see any progress by me for a while, but I won't have forgotten. -- Hoary (talk) 00:00, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

"modern" hebrew
I didn't want to change it without asking, why is Hebrew listed as "modern" hebrew? Yes, it is different from biblical hebrew, but every other language listed also is different from its older forms and they are not listed with this distinction 46.117.102.89 (talk) 23:59, 25 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Biblical Hebrew has a big cultural prominence, so modern or Israeli is added in many contexts to specify non-Biblical Hebrew. I bet a lot of times "modern Greek" is used also... AnonMoos (talk) 01:49, 26 July 2022 (UTC)


 * I bet you'd like the German way of doing things even less: modern Hebrew is called "Iwrith" or "Iwrit" or de:Ivrit, completely different from ancient Hebrew, which is "Hebraeisch"... AnonMoos (talk) 15:21, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
 * It's simple: when you say English without modifying adjective, in most contexts it will refer to Modern English; if you need to be more specific, you can add "Old", "Middle" etc. In the case of Hebrew, you will probably find just as many instances where it means "Biblical Hebrew" next to cases where it refers to "Modern Hebrew". And since blend words are a thing only in Modern Hebrew, it helps to be specific here. (When you say "English has many blend words", no-one will say: "hey, but there are none in Beowulf and the Canterbury Tales".) –Austronesier (talk) 19:31, 27 July 2022 (UTC)