Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of portmanteaux


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result of the debate was keep.  Grue  14:05, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

List of portmanteaux
I'm not quite sure having a list of portmanteaux is that great of an idea. The only advantage a list has over a category is that the list would indicate which two words have been blended. However, this list is somewhat unmaintainable, is prone to bundles and bundles of neologisms/protologisms, and even has a bunch of self-references (indeed, if we were to include Wiktionary, Wikipedia, et al., we'd have to include every company name that is a portmanteau). Heck, it even includes "-cruft". Hence, I'm going to call this list, "wordcruft". TheProject 18:40, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep or merge to Portmanteau.  Interesting enough to keep.  If most of the examples didn't have articles, I'd say delete, but most of them do.  Powers 18:51, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. Like most Wikipedia lists, this one is really, really, really, lame, but as long as we have separate articles for each of these portmanteaux, there is nothing that says they can't or shouldn't be compiled into a list. I'd like to see sources cited for the entries that don't have their own article, though. wikipediatrix 19:12, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Isn't that what categories are for? TheProject 20:16, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Categories can't explain the origin of portmanteaux. Powers 23:55, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Neither should encyclopedias. The origin of words are etymologies.  Etymologies are part of Wiktionary's remit, not ours.  Wikipedia is not a dictionary. &mdash;Lamentation ( 10:35, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep, lots of these pages ended up getting deleted a while ago because a user decided to merge them all into a single, messy article. I salvaged this one because it does have some use. &mdash;Xezbeth 21:02, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete but add a truncated list to the main portmanteau article. This isn't an exhaustive list, it's just what people happen to have thought of / made up. It's full of suspect entries (anacronym, anecdata, blacronym and that's only from the first few lines) and they're getting more numerous all the time. There's no point in trying to list portmanteaux because they get coined constantly and fall out of use as readily as they are created. A shorter list of well known ones that are in common use and that will be around for some time to come in the main article would be much better.--Lo2u 22:34, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete, because a category will serve well enough and portmanteus multiply like rabbits, making the list criteria too indiscriminate. Full disclosure, I have an unhealthy distaste of portmanteaus. hateless 22:59, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per Lo2u. Categories may not explain the origin, but if the article for each is at all decent, then it will, so the information should be available. GassyGuy 01:36, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
 * This is a list of words whose sole selection criterion is lexicographic. It should properly belong only at Wiktionary; the Wiktionarians are much better equipped than we are to determine whether a word (as opposed to a thing) is something that was simply made up in school one day.  (Such as "blaccent" currently on our list, a refugee from Urban Dictionary.  Most of the other redlinks are probably similar cases.)  They, in fact, have their own Category:Portmanteaus, which is much more useful than this list: if you're browsing a list of words that are interesting only because of the way they're constructed, you're more likely to want to see the histories and meanings of the words themselves, which is present in Wiktionary's entries (and generally lacking in our articles).  Our own Category:Portmanteaus is just barely tolerable.  This redundant and forever-incomplete, inaccurate, and original-research-prone list is not.  Delete. &mdash;Lamentation ( 10:33, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. &mdash; Dunc|&#9786; 12:56, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
 * This, naturally, is bad-faith retaliation for this. &mdash;Lamentation ( 13:08, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep, as per Wikipediatrix and LtPowers. This one's actually vaguely useful, for a list. Plus it's interesting. Suntiger 18:25, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment Just wondering, how many of the keep voters would object to the list being moved to the main portmanteau page? If the list were a little less open-ended, a list of notable portmanteaux as a demonstration and clarification of the substance of the article itself perhaps, it would be an even more useful tool and something more suitable for an encyclopaedia. Whatever happens to the list I don't think anyone can disagree that a lot needs to go. I imagine most people get to this page from the portmanteau article so we could add a link to the Wiktionary list in place of the old one and I think it would be a fairly seamless improvement. The existence of a list article just enourages people to add increasingly obscure, unverifiableand and silly words that are notable for nothing other than that they are portmanteaux. --Lo2u 21:35, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep Interesting, useful article for grammar/linguistics purposes - CNichols 01:59, 4 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.