Arnold Zwicky's Blog

From a recent Scenes from a Multiverse:

The linguistic point is the cute POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau) bento boxer: bento box + boxer.

On bento box, from the Wikipedia page:

Bento (弁当 bentō) is a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. A traditional bento consists of rice, fish or meat, and one or more pickled or cooked vegetables, usually in a box-shaped container. Containers range from disposable mass produced to hand crafted lacquerware. Although bento are readily available in many places throughout Japan, including convenience stores, bento shops (弁当屋 bentō-ya), train stations, and department stores, it is still common for Japanese homemakers to spend time and energy for their spouse, child, or themselves producing a carefully prepared lunch box.

Bento boxes are widely available as lunch specials in Japanese restaurants outside Japan (for instance, in several restaurants within a mile or two of my house in Palo Alto).

I’m still trying to imagine the sport of bento boxing.

This entry was posted on August 24, 2011 at 8:43 am and is filed under Linguistics in the comics, 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.