Talk:List of portmanteaux

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This article was previously considered for deletion. An archived record of the discussion can be found here.

Contents

[edit] Unfit

"Kramit from Kermit and Damnit, this word was said in some song about Big Bird and Kermit getting stoned. Sesame Street was referred to as "Sensimilla Street" in that song." This is completely unappropiate for wikipedia's standards. Cite the song and artist before posting this again.

[edit] Counter-Vandalism/Constructive Vandalism

One or more editors of this main page have been frivolously charged with vandalism. An error has been made in the organization, structure or content of the “Portmanteaus List”. This error not only creates a redundancy or extraneous duplication within the content, but it also creates an inherent contradiction: the entire or nearly entire “general list” of portmanteaus continues to additionally appear under the “Rejected Portmanteaus” category. Because of the major impact of this error upon the coherence and intellectual integrity of this page, this error requires prompt correction. Charges of vandalism, however, have prevented such necessary corrections from occurring.

Nonetheless, this error is easily and readily correctable. Simply, it requires that an editor delete the “general list” of portmanteaus as it appears under the “Rejected portmanteaus” section. The fact that a substantial textual portion of this site must be deleted, in order to effectuate the correction, does not mean that such deletion amounts to vandalism. Again, this textual portion is unnecessarily repetitive and contradictory. As such, the reversal of this error is consistent with general “Wikipedia” policy as well as with general notions of “truth” expansion and constructive knowledge building.

Accordingly, the users making these unwarranted vandalism charges, in effect, are contributing to a form of vandalism. "Constructive" vandalism may refer to a situation in which a user prevents a substantive and worthwhile change from occurring due to reckless oversight or negligent interference. Overall, the value of this interactive forum is diminished and a static but lesser form of knowledge is preserved and impliedly encouraged.

Fixing this major yet easily reparable problem requires a small amount of active user energy or editing. Upon finishing this memo, I shall make this change. No vandalism, in any genuine sense of the term, will be required. Continual interference and prevention, however, potentially or constructively is a form of vandalism itself. --- SOCIOPOWER

[edit] Plural form

The plural of portmanteau (which comes from porte-manteau) would be portmanteaux (from portes-manteaux: the x is not pronounced!) and NOT portmanteaus!—Kbolino 07:30, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

English words borrowed from other languages do not always follow the rules of their parent language when it comes to pluralization and conjugation. Dictionary.com gives both portmanteaus and portmanteaux as acceptable, with portmanteaus listed first. --Pagrashtak 03:01, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
Both American Heritage and Webster's say that Portmanteaus is the most common plural form. I don't really consider Dictionary.com authoritative and it seems that they are unaware that Unicode exists: code page U+0100–017F [Latin Extended-A] and the character U+0259 [code page U+0250–02AF, IPA Extensions], all of which are defined in Arial Unicode MS, provide the characters for which they use images as subsitutes. —Kbolino 07:51, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Moreover, Microsoft Word includes both "portmanteaus" and "portmanteaux" as proper spellings. As such, it seems appropriate to use either spelling. Any suggestion to the otherwise belies common cultural acceptances in favor of rigid rule systems with self-imposed authority.

[edit] Structured list?

We should split this list into different articles since portmanteau words are neologistically coined. --SuperDude 19:41, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

A section of this list has just got it's own article now, neologisms can now be controlled onto separate lists. --Nintendude 00:44, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Internet

I was tought that "Internet" was a portmanteau for "Interconnected Networks" ... Anyone agree and have a good way to add that to the list that already doesn't make sense? ("Interglobal network??" Interglobal would mean between globes... does that make sense? And it was called the Internet before it was international, so I presume "International" does not apply either. "Interchanged network" doesn't mean a whole lot either.) I would suggest just replacing the stuff that's there with "from interconnected and network", but I may be slighly biases.. so I start a discussion :-)

BODACIOUS

I. "Bodacious" or "Bowdacious" is chiefly American Southern and probably derives from "boldacious", an archaic English dialect form. This connection reinforces the theory that American Southern English maintains soem archaic British expressions.

II. The term "bardacious" is retained in African Speech in New York City.

III. Any connection of the term "bodacious" to the Celtic warrior queen Boadicea is unsupported by linguistic history and contradicts its distinct, chronicled geographic origins.

[edit] Removed self-references

I removed the following, which were self-referential and not really fitting with the list:

The former doesn't list anything specific, and is far too self-referential. The latter is rather debatable as a portmanteau, since you could argue that Wikipedian is just the word that logically follows from the word Wikipedia to describe a user.

kmccoy (talk) 21:20, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Duplicate -lish list

The -lish list is largely duplicated in the General section and the Other Languages section. Unless someone objects I'll copy unique entries from the General section and reduce it to a reference from the General section to the Other Languages section. JimTheFrog 04:14, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

JimTheFrog, I agree with your suggestion and the present placement of the -list list has bothered me before.

SOCIOPOWER 17:29, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Ok, changes made. JimTheFrog 06:01, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Engrish, incluude it

What about Engrish??? The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.101.216.127 (talk • contribs) .

Engrish is a corruption of English based on the Japanese consonant that sounds roughly between an English l and r. It's not a portmanteau because it's a modification of a single word, not a combination of two words. -- TKD 09:54, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Self-redirections

Why do some of the words on this list redirect to this page? It seems kind of pointless, not to mention frustrating.

[edit] Swears?

These seem quite unnecessary, as well as offensive. The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.128.236.59 (talk • contribs) .

Wikipedia is not censored, and the list, while offensive to some, is possibly useful information. -- TKD 22:40, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Duplication in pop culture list

There's significant duplication in the separate "List of hybrid word puns used in pop culture" entry, referenced from the "Art, literature and entertainment (pop culture)" section of this entry. I know this is already a pretty large entry, but it would seem cleaner to delete the other list and pull it back into this one. At what point does a portmanteau become "pop" enough to go in the other list? --JimTheFrog 09:26, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

For example, TKD just added machinima (which is fine), but it was already in the "List of hybrid word puns used in pop culture" article. --JimTheFrog 22:01, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
I completely forgot about that list when I went to add it. I would be in favor of merging the two lists. It seems arbitrary, not to mention confusing, that marketing, TV, and other fiction are here while that sublist is not. Plus, "machinima" could also conceivably fit under "computer and technology puns". I'm not sure what to do about the length of the list, but I think the majority of the puns here could be considered "pop-culture" in one way or another -- even some of the ones under the "general" heading (e.g., animatronics, RoboCop). I almost think that a straight alphabetical list would be least confusing. Yeah, it'll be long, but at least we won't have to worry about classification and pigeonholing some terms. -- TKD 22:35, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Permafrost?

I'm not sure about this, so I'm asking here. Is permafrost a portmanteau? — Michael J 02:14, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

No. Perma from permanent is applicable, but frost is used in entirity: not blended. Good try, though.

I disagree. Five of the first ten portmanteaux currently listed contain one of the entire words (alphabet, anacronym, anecdata, artivist, and bacne). Also, neither this page nor portmanteau actually say that an entire word cannot be blended with a part of another word. --63.118.227.254 17:54, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

By my count over 60 portmanteaux now listed contain entire words. Some of them I believe are valid portmanteaux, including frankenfood and datacasting. Others I believe are not valid portmanteaux. In particular, if a word is comprised of a combining form followed by a word, it's not a portmanteau. By this definition, the following are not valid portmanteaux: petrochemical, e-mail or email. Petro- as a combining form usually means rock, but in modern times can mean petroleum. e- is just a prefix, and even if it means electronic it is not even a full syllable from that word, so e-mail and email are not portmanteaux.
The following are simply compound words and not portmanteaux: Wikinews = Wiki + news; palmtop = palm + top (a computer that fits atop the user's palm). Unless streetball is really street + basketball, not street + ball, streetball is just a compound word. Anomalocaris 22:55, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia is not for things made up in school one day

I can see at least one word that falls into this category: "bungry". I'm sure there are others too.

  • Unless anyone objects, I'll delete any terms that either are not in common usage, have their own article, have a reference or external link with their use, or a really good explanation of the term's use. Sexile? Please. Instead of straight-up deletion, how about asking for citations and waiting a week or so, then deleting? Thoughts anyone? Also I've noticed a few words occur multiples times on the list, but I'm too lazy to fix them at this time. :) Porlob 21:59, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
    • I added "cictation needed" to part of the list, then had to run. Can anyone help finish?
The "citation needed" tags have been up for a while now. I'm deleting anything not referenced or in common usage. Porlob 13:58, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inconsistency voxel

The Voxel page says that a voxel a portmanteau is of the words volumetric and pixel. On this page, it is said it is a combination of the words volume and pixel. Which one is it?


[edit] Arts, literature, media and popular culture

I moved all kinds of things around and catgorized the above named section into individual types of media I think much or all of the marketing section should be moved into here, either into the appropriate section (e.g., "Television" for "sitcom"), or in an "advertizing" or "marketing" subsection within. Anyone? Porlob 16:29, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More changes

I'm just made a new series of changes to clean this article up. There are numerous syllabic abbreviations that still need to be removed. Porlob 16:29, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] portmanteau

isn't the word portmanteau itself a portmanteau ? since it is condensed from the (French) "porter" (to carry) and "manteau". — MFH:Talk 22:17, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Video Games

It should be noted that many portmanteaus that have been added here are way too self-referential to be in the section. While Famicom is fine, "Goomboss" is not something easily understandable by anyone who does not know what a Goomba is in the first place, and that it is Nintendo related. --LanceHeart