Sandwich portmanteaus: lepicdary

From Eleanor Houck, this link to a New Nitro Circus video with the description:

Travis Pastrana and the whole Nitro Circus crew are back together in a truly LEPICDARY (epic n’ legendary) action packed 3D film. Expect the impossible, ridiculous, insane, hysterical, and purely awesome!

That’s a sandwich portmanteau lepicdary.

In a sandwich portmanteau, one contributor is put inside the other, replacing some medial material in the second: L – EPIC – DARY has EPIC inserted within L – EGEN – DARY, replacing the EGEN of LEGENDARY. Note that EPIC and EGEN overlap (both phonologically and orthographically) in their initial E (phonologically an accented /ɛ/).

I’m not sure I’d have understood LEPICDARY right off the bat; it strikes me as a dubious portmanteau, along the lines of Innovatrium, womance, and twunk as discussed here.

In case you’re not familiar with Nitro Circus — I wasn’t — here’s the Wikipedia description:

Nitro Circus is an American television series that featured Travis Pastrana and his friends traveling around the world riding dirtbikes, base jumping, and performing stunts. It was originally run as a miniseries in 2006 on Fuel TV. In January 2009, it began running as an episodic reality television show on MTV that featured people performing various dangerous stunts.

Lepicdary, dude!

 

3 Responses to “Sandwich portmanteaus: lepicdary”

  1. Victor Steinbok Says:

    I guess, the RuPaul “Condragulations!”, that I sent you earlier, would fall in the same category.

    • arnold zwicky Says:

      Yes, but it’s a bit more complex. Here’s an Urban Dictionary entry:

      From Rapaul’s [RuPaul’s] DragU show. Female contestants, guided by seasoned drag queens from Rupaul’s Drag Race, fight to be the fiercest drag queen. Rupaul congradulates (or condraguates) the contestant who finishes with top honors with this word. (link)

      DRAG for GRAD (representing standard spelling GRAT) is not just a substitution, but also a transposition.

  2. The drag news for linguists « Arnold Zwicky's Blog Says:

    […] a recap from my recent posting on sandwich portmanteaus, in a comment from Victor Steinbok on condragulate. I supplied an Urban Dictionary entry – From Rapaul’s […]

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