Portmanteau: When Smashing Words Together Sets Writers Free
If you know me really well, you know that I absolutely love bad TV. We’re talking Xena tossing around a baby in the middle of a fight, classics like The Blob, and of course, Mechagodzilla and Godzilla duking it out with killer lightning bolt effects. There’s something comforting about the absurdity of it next to the seriousness hurt of the world.
Once in a while, in my bad TV, I find little gem moments that, for all of their stupidity, are brilliant for the way they demonstrate truths about art or humanity. One of those moments is nestled in Kung Pow, a comedy in which an old Kung fu movie is combined with new footage and then dubbed. The main character, aptly named The Chosen One, sees some of his good friends attacked and killed. (Because it’s comedy, it’s not nearly as horrible as it sounds.) After the crisis, he struggles to find a word that’s fitting for how bad and wrong killing is.
His solution?
Just splice bad and wrong. Killing is badong.
The scene gets better. He commits to being the opposite of badong, which, naturally, is gnodab. (That, by the way, makes use of yet another technique called anadrome, which means one words has its spelling derived from reversing the spelling of another. And as a special treat, anadrome is a portmanteau of the words anagram and palindrome.)
A technique not just for a comedy
In the scene, The Chosen One’s end product is goofy. It’s meant to get a laugh. But the process he goes through of combining words to make new ones actually happens all the time. Brunch, cosplay, ginormous, spork, workaholic, brunch, motel, and bromance are just some examples of words that are simply the result of smashing two others together. We do it all the time with celebrity couples, too, such as Brangelina or TomKat.
Sometimes called blend words, these terms technically are known as portmanteau. As the Kung Pow scene demonstrates, portmanteau is important in linguistic development because it helps join the meaning of multiple words when there isn’t an existing one that quite works. It often reflects cultural or societal shifts along the way. And as in the scene, the creation of portmanteau typically isn’t an accident. But it can sometimes be difficult to pinpoint where a portmanteau has originated, particularly in cases where the combination is used verbally first rather than in writing.
The perks of portmanteau for writers
What I love about portmanteau is that people take what already exists in a language and use it to expand that language. Although there’s beauty in the development of an entirely new term, such as de-extinction, I find it interesting to ponder how many combinations are possible with the roughly 171,000 words available in English. What combinations are most likely to happen in the future? Why? It’s like seeing what happens when you give a kid a bin full of Lego pieces.
Portmanteau is a treat for writers given its function in that, when you are creating new concepts or worlds for stories, you can create words that are more effective and efficient at communicating what you mean. They can become part of your voice or brand. Tolkien, for instance, used the portmanteau “confusticate” to get across the ideas of “confuse” and “complicate.” And in fact, portmanteau can redefine entire approaches to literature. The term “romantasy” refers to books that combine elements of the romance and fantasy genres.
Use with intention, and not too much
If you’re going to use blend words, do it with purpose. Really think about the meaning you’re after, and don’t minimize the effect by overusing the technique. Other than that, play with your Legos however you want and have as much fun as possible. It’s a pretty goonobad thing to do.