Perhaps you've been in this situation before. You bump into your neighbor on your way in or out and you get to talking and they say something like, "Yeah, money's a little tight this year. We might have to stick around here and have a staycation.", or you're talking to someone at the office and they say, "Look at this pretty necklace Bill gave me for our monthaversary." If you're anything like me, you feel yourself caught somewhere between the urge to cringe, and the urge to grab the nearest pair of scissors and go to work on their tongue while screaming, "Hold still dammit! You don't deserve the ability to speak!" Okay, maybe you're nothing like me.
They're called portmanteau words, which I'm told is itself a french example of such a word. I'll have to take their word for it, since I don't speak French. A portmanteau word is the bastard child formed from the illicit union of two legitimate words. It it is not a compound word, like "doghouse" or "chalkboard", because in those cases, the original words are left intact. Portmanteau words are the result of a messy butchering and splicing process, the sort of thing you'd expect to find in the basement of a psychopathic mad scientist. The entrails of etymology splatter the walls. If you break down a word like "evacuation" into its different components you can trace them back to their Latin roots. The creators of portmanteau words couldn't care less this about this sort of thing. Search for the roots of "jazzercise" or "ghettolicious" and you'll find nothing but nonsense. The mad scientist sews the heart of one word to the spleen of another. Basic anatomy is none of his concern. It's all about cuteness and flow. So you end up with a word like "evacucation", which I'm just going to go ahead and declare is a vacation where you end up spending most of it sitting on the toilet. (They told you not to drink the water.)
It's not easy for these illegitimate children, born out of the wedlock of proper syntax. They are spawned indiscriminately by any fool with a mouth. Some of them catch on, most of them are quickly left to return to the groan-inducing dust from whence they came. "Workaholic" is certainly an inspiring success story for words like "bromance" and "sexting" which are still struggling to make their mark. Hell, even spellcheck apparently recognizes it as a proper word, and it doesn't even recognize itself! Then you have words like "motel" which have enjoyed respectable society for so long, they've forgotten when they came from.
They say necessity is the mother of invention and the portmanteau word demonstrates this to a fault....then it won't shut up...then we start dropping hints that it's time for it to leave...then eventually we threaten to call the cops if it doesn't stop with the corny jokes. But the portmanteau never takes the hint. "Look at the time!", it says, "We've been up all night. I could stick around and maybe we could have brunch together. Get it!? It's like "breakfast" and "lunch" put together. Hee Hee!" Oh portmanteau word, don't make me kill you.
I'll admit that some of them fill a legitimate void. Some of them are even pretty catchy. But for every word like "televangelist", you get fifty other words like "shart" or "procrasturbate." Seriously? And "guesstimate" just has to go. It's either an estimate or a guess you stupid excuse for a word! You're either pretty sure, or you're taking a complete shot in the dark. You can't be both. The bottom line on most of these words is that they're just incredibly lame. Someone out there thinks they're being cute or clever, or maybe they're just plain lazy, and then some other idiot decides to run with it and we all have to endure words like "frenemy", hoping that they die a quick painful death. Oh well, as long as they don't start using nouns like "antique" as verbs. Oh...really? Well, that's just craptabulous.
Can I butcher words too? I offer "cirlinsenical" Which is circular and sensical. Hey, did you get a chance to see the meteor shower last night? It stormed here, which always seems to be the case whenever this type of thing is due, which leads me to believe someone is making all this crap up.
ReplyDeleteOh, I didn't hear about it. I missed it. I saw one last year. They go by so fast, you almost think something is wrong with your eyes. I saw the northern lights a couple years back. That was really something.
ReplyDeleteBut staycation is actually in Webster's now. That means it's a real word now, however sad it makes the rest of humanity. So is Muggle. Also sad.
ReplyDeleteSeriously? Clearly Webster's has become far too permissive.
ReplyDeleteAnd the OED has frenemy---its word of the day last week. Richard Chenevix Trench, James Murray and their cronies must all be turning in their graves.
ReplyDeleteOf course out here in the ol' blogoshphere all of your readollowers thought this post was rantabulous. I clapplaud you!
ReplyDeleteSome of these words are annoying, I agree, but I think that might be from overuse. I actually love playing around with language and the fact that certain terms catch on with the general populace is endlessly fascinating to me, despite cringing every time I hear "frenemy," which I've used myself plenty of times, usually in a mocking tone.
ReplyDeleteFace it, language evolves, and only the French have the power to control that evolution.
In general, I like the fact that Portmanteau words exist. Languages evolve, Bryan. That's what they do. As for whether a particular word deserves to prosper, well, you've described the Darwinian process pretty well. Many tend to wither and die. I'd forgotten about "motel" as an exception. I wonder how many people don't know it is a blending of "motor hotel."
ReplyDeleteThe words I wish would suffer an agonizing death are the descriptions of any political scandal ending with "-gate." Whoever thought that was cute should be sterilized so they cannot reproduce, thereby strengthening the species.
@Vincent: That's even more surprising than "staycation." You'd think they'd at least give these words a few years and see if they stick.
ReplyDelete@Rev: I almost forgot that "Blog" is itself an particularly annoying example.
@Brent: I think the annoying factor sometimes comes out of the sound of the word and the need it supposedly fills. What people call a "staycation", I usually call time off work. We can't all afford exotic trips, and it's a little grating to hear people coin this cutesy word for what's been the normal condition of some of our lives. Plus it's just dumb. You either take a vacation or you don't. Trying to make sitting around the house sound like something is just...lame.
@Doug: Calling portmanteaus "evolution" is kind of like strapping an iPod to the cat and telling people it can sing. I do admit that some of them can be very useful, especially in the computer technology field where probably a good 80% of the terminology consists of such words. The rough short-hand helps to keep up with the fast-paced new advances with catchy and memorable words. Plus, they can be fun. But it's one thing when you and I are throwing around words like "photochopping" and "awkwardtunity." It's something else when you hear some lady on the news talk about "sexting." It....loses something in the process.
While I do like playing with language for fun, it worries me that people don't realize that "words" like "craptastic" and "ginormous" aren't real words. And I really hate it when people use texting language when they speak!
ReplyDeleteIt cracks me up on medical dramas where they keep shouting "GSW". I don't know if they do this is real hospitals, but I kind of hope not. GSW might be a time saver on paper, but saying it out loud actually involves two more syllables than "Gun Shot Wound."
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, we may think these words have been recently invented but this may not be so. In defence of the OED (you say they should give these words a few years to see if they stick) "frenemy" for one, goes back at least 57 years, as this extract from the OED illustrates:
ReplyDelete1953 W. Winchell in Nevada State Jrnl. 19 May 4/4 Howz about calling the Russians our Frienemies?
1977 J. Mitford in N.Y. Times 13 Sept. 31/1 My sister and the Frenemy played together constantly,‥all the time disliking each other heartily.
etc etc
Really? I would have thought it was fairly new.
ReplyDeleteI know we have been making these kind of words for some time, although their output seems to have increased in recent years. I'm still pretty sure that "staycation" is only a couple of years old. I may have to look it up now. It might have been coined by F. Scott Fitzgerald for all I know.
When textspeak first started getting popular in the chat rooms, I LOL'ed several times at LOL. When I worked in the ER, LOL meant "Little Old Lady" and I couldn't figure out why people were shouting that in the chat rooms and everybody thought it was so funny.
ReplyDeleteI've held out against "lol" for years, for some reason, but yet I continually feel drawn ever closer to using it. I can't deny its usefulness.
ReplyDelete