Portmanteau words. Such as:
ginormous = gigantic + enormous
jeggings = jeans + leggings
turducken = turkey + duck + chicken
Seems
like a lot of these have been coined lately.
For a long list go to Wikipedia, itself a portmanteau word consisting of wiki (a
website where users can add, modify, or delete content) + encyclopedia.
I don’t like
or dislike portmanteau words in principle, but I love the fact that language is
organic and ever changing—new words budding, old ones falling away. In my
opinion, dictionaries should mirror word usage rather than proscribe it—unlike
Noah Webster’s, which aimed to give us standard “American” English.
My problem
with that is: who elected Webster official lexicographer? Fact is, no one did; he was self-appointed, all the while claiming he wanted a language for a “democratic”
nation.
And was
it really necessary in the first place for Americans to break away from “British”
English, especially over trivial matters such as how to spell labour, judgement, or theatre?
Webster’s
opus. It rubs me the wrong way, and I therefore dub it frictionary.
