Arnold Zwicky's Blog

From Instinct magazine (young, trendy, and gay), March 2011, p. 24, review of singer Ellie Goulding’s album Lights:

Goulding packs Lights with consistently sharp melodies and lyrics. She’s a rare breed in 2011: a popstrel with actual integrity.

That’s popstrel: pop minstrel, a telescoping-type portmanteau. (It took me a little while to work that out.) Most popstrels seem to be female, but I’ve found references to Justin Bieber as a popstrel, as here:

PUBESCENT popstrel Justin Bieber caused a tweenage riot in Sydney [Australia] yesterday when police cancelled his scheduled three-song live performance on Channel Seven’s Sunrise after several fans among the 5000-strong crowd were injured. (link)

Pubescent popstrel is nicely alliterative. Tweenage is a bonus. The story also refers, half-rhymingly, to Bieber fever.

This entry was posted on March 5, 2011 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Language play, Pop culture, Portmanteaus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.