What are word blends

Learn More With These Definitions and Examples

Updated on February 05, 2020

A word blend is formed by combining two separate words with different meanings to form a new one. These words are often created to describe a new invention or phenomenon that combines the definitions or traits of two existing things. 

Word Blends and Their Parts

Word blends are also known as portmanteau (pronunciation port-MAN-toe), a French word meaning «trunk» or «suitcase.» Author Lewis Carroll is credited with coining this term in «Through the Looking-Glass,» published in 1871. In that book, Humpty Dumpty tells Alice about making up new words from parts of existing ones:

«You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.»

There are different ways of creating word blends. One way is to combine portions of two other words to make a new one. These word fragments are called morphemes, the smallest units of meaning in a language. The word «camcorder,» for example,» combines parts of «camera» and «recorder.» Word blends can also be created by joining a full word with a portion of another word (called a splinter). For example, the word «motorcade» combines «motor» plus a portion of «cavalcade.»

Word blends can also be formed by overlapping or combining phonemes, which are parts of two words that sound alike. One example of an overlapping word blend is «Spanglish,» which is an informal mix of spoken English and Spanish. Blends can also be formed through the omission of phonemes. Geographers sometimes refer to «Eurasia,» the landmass that combines Europe and Asia. This blend is formed by taking the first syllable of «Europe» and adding it to the word «Asia.»

The Blend Trend

English is a dynamic language that is constantly evolving. Many of the words in the English language are derived from ancient Latin and Greek or from other European languages such as German or French. But starting in the 20th century, blended words began to emerge to describe new technologies or cultural phenomena. For instance, as dining out became more popular, many restaurants began serving a new weekend meal in the late morning. It was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch, so someone decided to make a new word that described a meal that was a little bit of both. Thus, «brunch» was born.

As new inventions changed the way people lived and worked, the practice of combining parts of words to make new ones became popular. In the 1920s, as traveling by car became more common, a new kind of hotel that catered to drivers emerged. These «motor hotels» quickly proliferated and became known as «motels.» In 1994, when a rail tunnel beneath the English Channel opened, connecting France and Great Britain, it quickly became known as the «Chunnel,» a word blend of «Channel» and «tunnel.»

New word blends are being created all the time as cultural and technological trends emerge. In 2018, Merriam-Webster added the word «mansplaining» to their dictionary. This blended word, which combines «man» and «explaining,» was coined to describe the habit that some men have of explaining things in a condescending manner.  

Examples

Here are some examples of word blends and their roots:

Blended word	Root word 1	Root word 2
agitprop	agitation	propaganda
bash	bat	mash
biopic	biography	picture
Breathalyzer	breath	analyzer
clash	clap	crash
docudrama	documentary	drama
electrocute	electricity	execute
emoticon	emotion	icon
fanzine	fan	magazine
frenemy	friend	enemy
Globish	global	English
infotainment	information	entertainment
moped	motor	pedal
pulsar	pulse	quasar
sitcom	situation	comedy
sportscast	sports	broadcast
staycation	stay	vacation
telegenic	television	photogenic
workaholic	work	alcoholic

Blendings
(blends,
fusions or
portmanteau
words) may
be defined as formation that combine two words and include the
letters or sounds they have in common as a connecting element:

bio (logical) +
(electro)nic →
bionic

wash +
(caf)eteria →
washeteria

sk(ateboard) +
(s)urfing →
skurflng

slim+gymnastics →
slimnastics;

miserable+flimsy →
mimsy;

gallop+triumph →
galumph;

new+utopia →
neutopia

UA. банківський
+ автомат
→ банкомат

The process of formation is
also called telescoping.
The analysis into immediate constituents is
helpful in
so far as it permits the definition of a blend as a word with the
first constituent represented by a stem whose final part may be
missing, and the second constituent by a stem of which the initial
part is missing. The second constituent when used in a series of
similar blends may turn into a suffix. A new suffix -on
is, for
instance, well under way in such terms as nylon,
rayon, formed
from the final element of cotton.

Depending
upon the prototype phrases with which they can be correlated two
types of blends can be distinguished. One may be termed additive,
the second restrictive.
Both involve the sliding together not only of sound but of meaning as
well. Yet the semantic relations which are at work are different.

The
additive type,
is transformable into a phrase consisting of the respective complete
stems combined by the conjunction and:

smoke
and
fog
→ smog − a
mixture of smoke and fog.

The elements may be
synonymous, belong to the same semantic field or at least be members
of the same lexico-grammatical class of words:

French+English
→ Frenglish;

smoke+haze
→ smaze;

Panjab+Afghania+Kashmir+Singh+Baluchistan
→ Pakistan;

breakfast
and
lunch
→ brunch

transmitter
and
receiver
→ transceiver

The
restrictive type
is transformable into an attributive phrase where the
first element serves as modifier of the second:

cine(matographic
pano) rama
→ cinerama.

medical
care → medicare

positive
electron → positron

television
broadcast → telecast

An
interesting variation of the same type is presented by cases of
superposition,
formed by pairs of words having similar clusters of sounds which seem
to provoke blending:

motorists’
hotel →motel;

sham
bamboo (imitation
bamboo) →
shamboo;

slang
+language
→ slanguage;

spiced ham → spam.

Blends,
although not very numerous altogether, seem to be on the rise,
especially in terminology and also in trade advertisements:
Reaganomics»
Irangate, blackspiloitation, workaholic, foodoholic, scanorama etc..

7.2. Back-formation.

Back-formation
(also
called reversion)
is a term borrowed from
diachronic linguistics. It denotes the derivation of new words by
subtracting a real or supposed affix from existing words through
misinterpretation of their structure.

The earliest examples of
this type of word-building are the verb to
beg that
was made from the French borrowing beggar,
to burgle from
burglar, to
cobble from
cobbler. In
all these cases the verb was made from the noun by subtracting what
was mistakenly associated with the English suffix -er.
The
pattern of the type to
work —
worker was
firmly established in the subconscious of English-speaking people at
the time when these formations appeared, and it was taken for granted
that any noun denoting profession or occupation is certain to have a
corresponding verb of the same root. So, in the case of the verbs to
beg, to burgle, to cobble the
process was reversed: instead of a noun made from a verb by
affixation (as in
painter from
to paint),
a verb was
produced from a noun by subtraction. That is why this type of
word-building received the name of back-formation
or
reversion.

Later examples of
back-formation are to butle
from
butler, to
baby-sit from
baby-sitter,
to force-land from
forced
landing, to blood-transfuse from
blood-transfuing.

Back formation is mostly
active in compound verbs, and is combined with word-composition. The
basis of this type of word-building are compound words and
word-combinations having verbal nouns, gerunds, participles or other
derivative nouns as their second component (rush-development,
finger-printing, well-wisher).
These compounds and word-combinations are wrongly considered to be
formed from compound verbs which are nonexistent in reality. This
gives a rise to such verbs as; to
rush-develop, to finger-print, to well-wish.

Structural
changes taking place in back-formation became possible because of
semantic changes that preceded them. The change of meaning resulted
in demotivation, and this paved the way for phonic changes, i.e.
assimilation, loss of sound and the like, which in their turn led to
morphemic alternations that became meaningful. Semantic changes often
influence the morphological structure by modifying the relations
between stems and derivational affixes. Structural changes, in their
turn, depend on the combined effect of demotivation and analogy
conditioned by a higher frequency of occurrence of the pattern that
serves as model. Provided all other conditions are equal, words
following less frequent structural patterns are readily subjected to
changes on the analogy of more frequent patterns.

The
very high frequency of the pattern verb
stem+-er
(or
its equivalents) is a matter of common knowledge.

Back-formation
may be also based on the analogy of inflectional forms as testified
by the singular nouns pea
and
cherry.
Pea (the
plural of which is peas
and
also pease)
is
from ME pese<OE
pise, peose<Lat pisa, pl.
of pesum.
The
ending -s
being
the most frequent mark of the plural in English, English speakers
thought that sweet
peas(e) was
a plural and turned the combination peas(e)
soup into
pea
soup. Cherry is
from OFr cerise,
and
the -se
was
dropped for exactly the same reason.

The
most productive type of back-formation in
present-day English is
derivation of
verbs
from
compounds that have either -er
or
-ing
as
their last element:

thought-reading
n
→ thought-reader
n
→ thought-read
v;

air-conditioning
n
→ air-conditioner
n
→
air-condition
v;

turbo-supercharger
n.
→
turbo-supercharge
v

Other
examples of back-formations from compounds
are the verbs baby-sit,
beachcomb, house-break, house-clean, house-keep,
red-bait, tape-record etc.

The
semantic relationship between the prototype and the derivative is
regular. Baby-sit,
for
example, means to act or become employed as a baby-sitter, that is to
take care of children for short periods of time while the parents are
away from home.

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Last Update: Jan 03, 2023

This is a question our experts keep getting from time to time. Now, we have got the complete detailed explanation and answer for everyone, who is interested!

Asked by: Francesca Lueilwitz

Score: 4.8/5
(32 votes)

Blending is one of the many ways new words are made in English. It refers to joining the beginning of one word and the end of another to make a new word with a new meaning. Smog, from smoke and fog, and brunch, from breakfast and lunch, are examples of blends.

What are some examples of word blends?

The most common beginning consonant blends include: bl, br, cl, cr, dr, fr, tr, fl, gl, gr, pl, pr, sl, sm, sp and st. Blends can also occur at the end of words as in the word “last”. There are also blends which contain three consonants.

What is a word with a blend?

J.R. Bee. Updated February 05, 2020. A word blend is formed by combining two separate words with different meanings to form a new one. These words are often created to describe a new invention or phenomenon that combines the definitions or traits of two existing things.

What is a blend in phonics examples?

Blending in phonics is combining broken up sounds to make a word. For example, you hear ‘p-i-g’ and you merge these sounds together to make the single word ‘pig’. It is a key skill of early reading.

What is a blend word in kindergarten?

A blend is two consonants that come together and they both keep their sounds. For example, think about the sl in the word slide. You can clearly hear the sound of the s and the sound of the l in the word slide. There are several groups of blends.

37 related questions found

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about word-formation. For a method of teaching how to read, see synthetic phonics.

In linguistics, a blend (sometimes called blend word, lexical blend, portmanteau, or portmanteau word) is a word formed from parts of two or more other words. At least one of these parts is not a morph (the realization of a morpheme) but instead a mere splinter, a fragment that is normally meaningless. In the words of Valerie Adams:

In words such as motel, boatel and Lorry-Tel, hotel is represented by various shorter substitutes – ‑otel, ‑tel, or ‑el – which I shall call splinters. Words containing splinters I shall call blends.^{[1][n 1]}

Classification[edit]

Blends of two or more words may be classified from each of three viewpoints: morphotactic, morphonological, and morphosemantic.^[2]

Morphotactic classification[edit]

Blends may be classified morphotactically into two kinds: total and partial.^[2]

Total blends[edit]

In a total blend, each of the words creating the blend is reduced to a mere splinter.^[2] Some linguists limit blends to these (perhaps with additional conditions): for example, Ingo Plag considers «proper blends» to be total blends that semantically are coordinate, the remainder being «shortened compounds».^[3]

Commonly for English blends, the beginning of one word is followed by the end of another:

• boom + hoist → boost ^{[n 2]}
• breakfast + lunch → brunch ^{[n 2]}

Much less commonly in English, the beginning of one word may be followed by the beginning of another:

• teleprinter + exchange → telex ^{[n 2]}
• American + Indian → Amerind ^{[n 2]}

Some linguists do not regard beginning+beginning concatenations as blends, instead calling them complex clippings,^[4] clipping compounds^[5] or clipped compounds.^[6]

Unusually in English, the end of one word may be followed by the end of another:

• Red Bull + margarita → bullgarita ^{[n 2]}
• Hello Kitty + delicious → kittylicious ^{[n 2]}

A splinter of one word may replace part of another, as in three coined by Lewis Carroll in «Jabberwocky»:

• chuckle + snort → chortle ^{[n 2]}
• flimsy + miserable → mimsy
• slimy + lithe → slithy ^{[n 2]}

They are sometimes termed intercalative blends; these words are among the original «portmanteaus» for which this meaning of the word was created. ^[7]

Partial blends[edit]

In a partial blend, one entire word is concatenated with a splinter from another.^[2] Some linguists do not recognize these as blends.^[8]

An entire word may be followed by a splinter:

• dumb + confound → dumbfound ^{[n 2]}
• fan + magazine → fanzine ^{[n 3]}

A splinter may be followed by an entire word:

• Brad + Angelina → Brangelina ^{[n 2]}
• American + Indian → Amerindian ^{[n 2]}

An entire word may replace part of another:

• adorable + dork → adorkable ^{[n 2]}
• disgusting + gross → disgrossting ^{[n 2]}

These have also been called sandwich words,^[9] and classed among intercalative blends.^[7]

(When two words are combined in their entirety, the result is considered a compound word rather than a blend. For example, bagpipe is a compound, not a blend, of bag and pipe.)

Morphonological classification[edit]

Morphonologically, blends fall into two kinds: overlapping and non-overlapping.^[2]

Overlapping blends[edit]

Overlapping blends are those for which the ingredients’ consonants, vowels or even syllables overlap to some extent. The overlap can be of different kinds.^[2] These are also called haplologic blends.^[10]

There may be an overlap that is both phonological and orthographic, but with no other shortening:

• anecdote + dotage → anecdotage ^{[n 2]}
• pal + alimony → palimony ^{[n 2]}

The overlap may be both phonological and orthographic, and with some additional shortening to at least one of the ingredients:

• California + fornication → Californication ^{[n 4]}
• picture + dictionary → pictionary ^{[n 2]}

Such an overlap may be discontinuous:

• politician + pollution → pollutician ^{[n 5]}
• beef + buffalo → beefalo ^{[n 2]}

These are also termed imperfect blends.^[11][12]

It can occur with three components:

• camisade + cannibalism + ballistics → camibalistics ^{[n 6]}
• meander + Neanderthal + tale → meandertale ^{[n 6]}

The phonological overlap need not also be orthographic:

• back + acronym → backronym ^{[n 2]}
• war + orgasm → wargasm ^{[n 2]}

If the phonological but non-orthographic overlap encompasses the whole of the shorter ingredient, as in

• sin + cinema → sinema ^{[n 2]}
• sham + champagne → shampagne ^{[n 2]}

then the effect depends on orthography alone. (They are also called orthographic blends.^[13])

An orthographic overlap need not also be phonological:

• smoke + fog → smog ^{[n 2]}
• binary + unit → bit ^{[n 2]}

For some linguists, an overlap is a condition for a blend.^[14]

Non-overlapping blends[edit]

Non-overlapping blends (also called substitution blends) have no overlap, whether phonological or orthographic:

• California + Mexico → Calexico ^{[n 2]}
• beautiful + delicious → beaulicious ^{[n 4]}

Morphosemantic classification[edit]

Morphosemantically, blends fall into two kinds: attributive and coordinate.^[2]

Attributive blends[edit]

Attributive blends (also called syntactic or telescope blends) are those in which one of the ingredients is the head and the other is attributive. A porta-light is a portable light, not a ‘light-emitting’ or light portability; light is the head. A snobject is a snobbery-satisfying object and not an objective or other kind of snob; object is the head.^[2]

As is also true for (conventional, non-blend) attributive compounds (among which bathroom, for example, is a kind of room, not a kind of bath), the attributive blends of English are mostly head-final and mostly endocentric. As an example of an exocentric attributive blend, Fruitopia may metaphorically take the buyer to a fruity utopia (and not a utopian fruit); however, it is not a utopia but a drink.

Coordinate blends[edit]

Coordinate blends (also called associative or portmanteau blends) combine two words having equal status, and have two heads. Thus brunch is neither a breakfasty lunch nor a lunchtime breakfast but instead some hybrid of breakfast and lunch; Oxbridge is equally Oxford and Cambridge universities. This too parallels (conventional, non-blend) compounds: an actor–director is equally an actor and a director.^[2]

Two kinds of coordinate blends are particularly conspicuous: those that combine (near‑) synonyms:

• gigantic + enormous → ginormous
• insinuation + innuendo → insinuendo

and those that combine (near‑) opposites:

• transmitter + receiver → transceiver
• friend + enemy → frenemy

Blending of two roots[edit]

Blending can also apply to roots rather than words, for instance in Israeli Hebrew:

• רמזור ramzor ‘traffic light’ combines רמז √rmz ‘hint’ and אור or ‘light’.
• מגדלור migdalor ‘lighthouse’ combines מגדל migdal ‘tower’ and אור or ‘light’.
• Israeli דחפור dakhpór ‘bulldozer’ hybridizes (Mishnaic Hebrew>) Israeli דחפ √dħp ‘push’ and (Biblical Hebrew>) Israeli חפר √ħpr ‘dig'[…]
• Israeli שלטוט shiltút ‘zapping, surfing the channels, flipping through the channels’ derives from
  • (i) (Hebrew>) Israeli שלט shalát ‘remote control’, an ellipsis – like English remote (but using the noun instead) – of the (widely known) compound שלט רחוק shalát rakhók – cf. the Academy of the Hebrew Language’s שלט רחק shalát rákhak; and
  • (ii) (Hebrew>) Israeli שטוט shitút ‘wandering, vagrancy’. Israeli שלטוט shiltút was introduced by the Academy of the Hebrew Language in […] 1996. Synchronically, it might appear to result from reduplication of the final consonant of shalát ‘remote control’.
• Another example of blending which has also been explained as mere reduplication is Israeli גחלילית gakhlilít ‘fire-fly, glow-fly, Lampyris‘. This coinage by Hayyim Nahman Bialik blends (Hebrew>) Israeli גחלת gakhélet ‘burning coal’ with (Hebrew>) Israeli לילה láyla ‘night’. Compare this with the unblended חכלילית khakhlilít ‘(black) redstart, Phœnicurus’ (<Biblical Hebrew חכליל ‘dull red, reddish’). Synchronically speaking though, most native Israeli-speakers feel that gakhlilít includes a reduplication of the third radical of גחל √għl. This is incidentally how Ernest Klein^[15] explains gakhlilít. Since he is attempting to provide etymology, his description might be misleading if one agrees that Hayyim Nahman Bialik had blending in mind.»^[16]

«There are two possible etymological analyses for Israeli Hebrew כספר kaspár ‘bank clerk, teller’. The first is that it consists of (Hebrew>) Israeli כסף késef ‘money’ and the (International/Hebrew>) Israeli agentive suffix ר- -ár. The second is that it is a quasi-portmanteau word which blends כסף késef ‘money’ and (Hebrew>) Israeli ספר √spr ‘count’. Israeli Hebrew כספר kaspár started as a brand name but soon entered the common language. Even if the second analysis is the correct one, the final syllable ר- -ár apparently facilitated nativization since it was regarded as the Hebrew suffix ר- -år (probably of Persian pedigree), which usually refers to craftsmen and professionals, for instance as in Mendele Mocher Sforim’s coinage סמרטוטר smartutár ‘rag-dealer’.»^[17]

Lexical selection[edit]

Blending may occur with an error in lexical selection, the process by which a speaker uses his semantic knowledge to choose words. Lewis Carroll’s explanation, which gave rise to the use of ‘portmanteau’ for such combinations, was:

Humpty Dumpty’s theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all. For instance, take the two words «fuming» and «furious.» Make up your mind that you will say both words … you will say «frumious.»^[18]

The errors are based on similarity of meanings, rather than phonological similarities, and the morphemes or phonemes stay in the same position within the syllable.^[19]

Use[edit]

Some languages, like Japanese, encourage the shortening and merging of borrowed foreign words (as in gairaigo), because they are long or difficult to pronounce in the target language. For example, karaoke, a combination of the Japanese word kara (meaning empty) and the clipped form oke of the English loanword «orchestra» (J. ōkesutora オーケストラ), is a Japanese blend that has entered the English language. The Vietnamese language also encourages blend words formed from Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary. For example, the term Việt Cộng is derived from the first syllables of «Việt Nam» (Vietnam) and «Cộng sản» (communist).

Many corporate brand names, trademarks, and initiatives, as well as names of corporations and organizations themselves, are blends. For example, Wiktionary, one of Wikipedia’s sister projects, is a blend of wiki and dictionary.

See also[edit]

• Acronym and initialism
• Amalgamation (names)
• Clipping (morphology)
• Conceptual blending
• Hybrid word
• List of blend words
• Phonestheme
• Phono-semantic matching
• Syllabic abbreviation
• Wiktionary category:English blends

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

External links[edit]