Portemanteau word

A portemanteau word is a Néologisme formed by the fusion of at least two others Mot S existing in the language. It is generally about a Haplologie: same a Syllabe constitutes at the same time the end of a word and the beginning of another, and the process then consists in joining them without repeating this common part; other times, only one of the words see amuï.

In the creation of a portemanteau word, contrary to the composition and of the derivation, the starting components are not entirely any more recognizable, because they telescoped.

The goal of the portemanteau word is to make a Word game, or to enrich the language in against the dictationnaires (Bruno San Marco).

Concerning the name

The expression “portemanteau word” is the Traduction of the English “” . The word “” formerly indicated large a Valise with two compartments. This is why Lewis Carroll, in her famous Romance On other side of the mirror , used the image of the portmanteau to show the interest of the telescoped words: it is enough to only one word to say two things at the same time.

In chapter 6, Humpty Dumpty (the egg Gros Coconut) explains to Alice the significance of the word “slithy” (“slictueux”) that it read at the beginning of the Poème Jabberwocky :

Current examples

Definitively entered the language of the portemanteau words like:

motel , contraction of highway and hotel ;
Software package , of professional and software ;
Software package , of software program and ;
tapuscrit , to type and handwritten ;
Franglais , of French and English ;
alicament , of food and drug ;
adulescent , of adolescent and adult (cf Tony Anatrella, the company adulescente);
Modem , of modulating and demodulator ;
codec , of coder and decoder ;
Data-processing , fusion between automatic information and , term become very current created by Philippe Dreyfus in 1962 and officialized by Charles de Gaulle (in the same way, Cognitique is a fusion between automatic knowledge and );

Like any neologism, the portemanteau words can provide an alternative to the lexical loans, in particular with the Anglicisme S:

clavardage , of keyboard and chattering (Québécois creation to translate the particular direction that in data processing the English word cat took, sometimes francized in tchate );
email , of electronic mail and (Québécois creation to replace the loan e-mail ).

The portemanteau words all are not of recent creations:

Décimeur : critical and ironic deformation, by Voltaire of the word Décimateur, implying by there which the Dîme was so important for the poor that it decimated them by the famine;

Midouze : river of the Moors consisted the junction of the Midou (sometimes spelled Midour ) and of the Twelve ;

with the Portugal, the town of Alcobaça and the small river Alcobaça ( Rio Alcobaça , name of the river to its mouth in the Atlantic Ocean) draw both their name from the confluence of two rivers, the Alcoa ( Rio Alcoa ) and the Baça ( Rio Baça ).

In Linguistic, the term can be used as Synonyme pleasant with contracted form (Forme single exit of two Lexème S which one cannot recognize any more: with + the → with the , of + the → of the French , in + dem → im German , etc). Same manner, a Morphème davit is a morpheme which carries simultaneously several significances: for example, the English morpheme - S carries the significances: code + present + third nobody + singular.

This form of neologism created by contraction of expressions is not specific to French and exists in many languages.

Portemanteau words in literature

The creation of portemanteau words allows an unlimited number of combinations, which cannot miss alluring the writers and impassioned plays of language:

snake + pants → ser' pen' heel (instead of ser' pentpan' heel );
horse + bag → che' val' ise ;

Lewis Carroll opened the way for the poets and the poetry, which will as well borrow in France Raymond Roussel and Antonin Artaud that Michel Leiris (with sound has guest + has host has ghost ), and the oulipiens of which, of course, Marcel Duchamp and Raymond Queneau. This last, in the blue Fleurs thus makes say to Lalix: You are tournipilant at the end! . Boris Vian invented in the same way the “pianocktail” of the scum of the days , oneiric object which link two sensual pleasures, the gustatory and the auditive , thanks to the Ivresse of the alcohol and that of the Jazz.

The play can then become définitionnel:

adoléchiant : young graduate with the bad character
stag-the-buttocks : cervidé rather yellowbelly (one of the animal '' of love '' of Paul Fournel
chérisson : to be whose one likes the prickly charm;
chirurchien : surgeon who reduces his patients in charpie
éléphapotame : pachyderm of the rivers (elephant + hippopotamus)
homarylinmonroe : shellfish that some like hot (one of the famous '' opossums '' of Herve Tellier).
merdiateur : man of media doing anything;
milichien : tracker dog;
poustache : moustache having pushed;
primaturé : monkey born before term;
testicubes : square testicles

The novlangue

In its famous novel 1984 , George Orwell worked out the Novlangue (already a portemanteau word), whose objective was, thanks to the lexical and syntactic simplification of the language, to control the thought itself.

Examples of portemanteau words in novlangue:

Miniver : ministry for the truth.
Crimesex : sexual activity practiced without goal of reproduction.

Works presenting of the collections of portemanteau words

Small fictionnaire illustrated , Alain Finkielkraut, Threshold.
To slow down: portemanteau words! , Alain Finkielkraut, Threshold.
Distractionnaire , Robert Gallisson and Louis international Pig-keeper, Key.
“the corner of the bags”, In Tricks, things and other things , Michel Laclos, Zulma.
the pornithorynque one is a salopare , Alain Créhange, Éditions Thousand and One Nights.
Sardinosaures & Co , Jacques Roubaud & Olivier Living room, the Library oulipienne n° 146.
animals of love , Paul Fournel, the Library oulipienne n° 147, rééd. 2007, illust. of Henri Cueco, Astral Beaver.
famous opossums , Herve Tellier, illust. of Xavier Gorce, 2007, Astral Beaver.

Extension of the portemanteau word

When the portemanteau word is composed of a contraction of three words and more, one speaks about “word-pants”.
When the portemanteau word is composed of two words whose last and first syllables coincide, one speaks about word-multi-stage.

See too

Haplology

External bonds

the pornithorynque one is a salopare
the famous opossums

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