by Lori Hatcher @LoriHatcher2
The
endless scroll of commercial messages flashed across the screen in the periphery
of the coffee shop where I was enjoying brunch—Medicare, an upcoming telethon,
a new sitcom, and a documentary about Army paratroopers.
Add to this the
distraction of the new ezine that had just arrived in my email box, and you can
understand why I was struggling to compose my latest blog post.
I
decided to investigate a word I hadn’t heard since high school English class,
but recently stumbled across, portmanteau.
The
website LiteraryDevices.net defines the word portmanteau (pawrt-MAN-toh) as “a literary device in which two or
more words are joined together to coin a new word. A portmanteau word is formed
by blending parts of two or more words but it always refers to a single
concept.” Unlike a compound word, it can have a completely different meaning
from the words from which it was coined.
