The Wit’s Guide to Portsmanteaux

Or, slithy fitfluencers

“Coo coo ca choo,” he later admitted.

“You see it’s like a portmanteau,” says Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass. “There are two meanings packed up into one word.”

The egg-shaped man was explaining the word slithy [slimy + lithe] to a confused Alice, and in doing so he borrowed a French term for a folding suitcase that, 152 years later, we still haven’t returned to the French. If they come looking for it, ask them to imagine how the course of literature would have changed if Alice had asked Humpty Dumpty what jeggings [jeans + leggings] were!

“Breathe in that smog [smoke + fog] and feel lucky that only in L.A. will you glimpse a green sun or a brown moon.”
— John Waters

Lewis Carroll, the creepy mathematician who created Alice in Wonderland,  eggsplained [eggs + explained] that a perfect portmanteau is born when you can’t decide which of two words — his examples were fuming and furious — to say first: 

“If your thoughts incline ever so little towards ‘fuming,’ you will say ‘fuming-furious;’ if they turn, by even a hair’s breadth, towards ‘furious,’ you will say ‘furious-fuming;’ but if you have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say ‘frumious.’”

This definition is a good way to rejectison [reject + jettison] the many word blends we’d be better without. If you’ve ever wanted to say “website” and “seminar” at the same time, say less. 

“I had always thought the words “hotel” and “motel” were synonyms, but as soon as I stepped across the threshold, I understood that a motel [motor + hotel] was grosser. It looked like the place where Smokey the Bear went to cheat on his wife.”
— Patricia Lockwood

A curious subset of portsmanteaux describe jobs that your olders [older + elders] wouldn’t understand. What better way to get the respect you deserve as a fitfluencing mompreneur [fitness + influencing + mom + entrepreneur] than mangling the language? Manguaging.

“We exchanged chitchat for 5½ hours about our respective children, about our ex-old men, all very, very heterocetera [heterosexual + etcetera].”
— Audre Lorde

The absolute worst portmanteau came during the viral unpleasantness of a few years back. Those who have not blocked it all out may recall that we fought incessantly over vaccines, referring to them by the names of the companies that produced them. But the Pfizer shots were actually given a name: Comirnaty! A drug-naming agency called The Brand Institute (really) created this extremely forgettable name for the most memorable medicine of our era by combining not two or three but FOUR words: COVID-19 + messenger RNA + community + immunity. Legiterally! [Legitimately + literally]

“I work all day and usually work at least part of every day of the week. This is not because I’m a workaholic [work + alcoholic] but because work keeps me from facing the world, one of my least favorite venues.”
— Woody Allen

This was the year of Barbenheimer [Barbie + Oppenheimer], but if you also caught the re-release of the Talking Heads’ legendary rockumentary [rock + documentary] and noticed how a young David Byrne resembles Cillian Murphy, you might have enjoyed a Stoppenheimer Making Sense double bill. And maybe also 2Fast2Frumious?

“Here, he will kill his old novel, tear out the flesh that he wants, stitch it to all-new material, electrocute [electric + execute] it with inspiration, and make it rise from the slab and stumble toward Cormorant Publishing.”
— Andrew Sean Greer

The cutest portmanteau is certainly the jackalope [jackrabbit + antelope]. The legendary horned rabbit of the West is famous for many reasons outlined in this amusing High Country News story, not least because its saliva can be used to make invisible ink. Don’t believe it? Neither did Colin Powell:

C43826-25, President Reagan showing National Security Advisor Colin Powell the "Jackalope" in the living room inside Rancho Del Cielo. 11/25/1987.

And the last word on portsmanteaux has to be: portmantout. This blend of every word ever — created by a very clever brogrammermaid — solves the problem of language, just as we previously solved the problem of cutlery with the spork [spoon + fork]. 

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This week’s Recommendation:
A comedy as dark as the Volga

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Quote Vote

“So along with my hot water bottle, Baedeker Guide, Band-aids, codeine, passport and two pounds of instant Postum, I tucked a hundred cigars into my portmanteau.”
— Groucho Marx

We gotta do winter, guys. It’s the solstice! Look outside! It’s already dark! But the ability to choose is, as ever, yours.

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That was Issue 233 of Get Wit Quick, or Gwick. Oddly I didn’t work brunch into it, because I am so out of my brunching years. You know what really killed it for me? Greedflation. Also thinking of poor Humpty Dumpty, poached to death for my mid-morning pleasure. Not to mention what Anthony Bourdain told us all about hollandaise [Holland + malaise] sauce. Did the square bracket gag work? If you’re still reading this, I’ll say yes. But I’ll only be sure if you buy my book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting and tap the heart [heavy + art] below.