User:MacRusgail/War on Portmanteaux

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Making a portmanteau is usually a lazy way of inventing a new word. Some people have done them well, e.g. Jabberwocky which contains lots of them, and they're sometimes even vaguely funny e.g. "Slimnastics", however, a lot of the ones that appear on Wikipedia are, well, just rubbish.

A few of the bad portmanteaux I've tried to get deleted off Wikipedia recently include:

  • Bentist (Bent Dentist)
  • Nettop (Internet Top - not even a proper one)
  • Pincest (?Pin Incest, when multiple pins bridge)
  • Scrotasm (Scrotum/Scrotal Orgasm)

And there's plenty more of them.

Making bad portmanteaux is easy; here's a few I made earlier-

  • Ameridentidate (American presidential candidate)
  • Boach (Baseball/basketball coach)
  • Chistralianese (Chinese Australian)
  • Kurdaqi (Kurdish Iraqi)
  • Skump (Ski jump)
  • Yellophone (Yell telephone)

To be fair, they're not all bad. I can even think of some good portmanteaux e.g.

But most are bad and must be stopped!

I hope you'll sign up for the "War on Portmanteaux", it's a lot more bloodless than real wars and worthwhile!