Arnold Zwicky's Blog

[4/25 disclaimer. In the constant upheavals of my life and the world around me, I’m now just picking random stuff to post about, from the 60 or 70 items in my ever-expanding queue — whatever catches my fancy at the moment. Don’t try to make sense of it as a whole.]

The Bizarro of 4/11, as US income tax day (4/15) was approaching; Wayno’s title: “Ax Deductions” (playing on tax deductions):

(#1) The ax-wielding Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz film confronts (with his characteristic facial expression) a special federal income tax form for metal filers, with an eccentric portmanteau name, Form 10-W40 (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page)

To come: very briefly, the Tin Man in the film; the contributors to the portmanteau word 10-W40; this portmanteau in a partial taxonomy of types of portmanteau words (it’s a sharing right portmanteau).

The Tin Man. With the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow, one of Dorothy’s companions on the yellow brick road to the Emerald City of Oz. Played by Jack Haley in the film:

(#2) Shown here with his woodsman’s ax; the Tin Man asks the Wizard of Oz for a heart (so that he can feel emotions); the Wizard gives him a testimonial that he has a heart (and has had one all along), and he gets a heart-shaped clock (visible in #1) as a symbol of his longing for a heart

The contributors to the portmanteau. The portmanteau:

10-W40 = 1040 + WD–40 — boldface highlights the shared material (on the right); the two distinct residues are underlined (the D of WD-40 is omitted, I guess to simplify the result; and the hyphen seems to have magically moved as well, so what we see is not the expected 10WD-40)

On 1040, from Wikipedia:

Form 1040, officially, the U.S. Individual Income Tax Return, is an IRS tax form used for personal federal income tax returns filed by United States residents. The form calculates the total taxable income of the taxpayer and determines how much is to be paid to or refunded by the government.

On WD-40, also from Wikipedia:

WD-40 (Water Displacement, 40th formula) is an American brand and the trademark of a penetrating oil manufactured by the WD-40 Company based in San Diego, California. Its formula was invented for the Rocket Chemical Company in 1953, before it became the WD-40 Company. WD-40 became available as a commercial product in 1961. It acts as a lubricant, rust preventive, penetrant and moisture displacer. There are specialized products that perform better than WD-40 in many of these uses, but WD-40’s flexibility has given it fame as a jack of all trades.

Types of portmanteau words. These days, most portmanteau words are mid portmanteaus, with two residue stretches R1 and R2, at the beginning and end of the portmanteau. Either there’s shared material S in the middle (the end of the first contributor and the beginning of the second), or the portmanteau is just R1 R2 (with the end S1 of the first contributor and the beginning S2 of the second contributor omitted):

— sharing mid portmanteau:

R1 S R2
= R1 S + S R2

helico pter odactyl ‘a cross between a winged vehicle and a flying reptile’
= helico pter + pter odactyl

—  reductive mid portmanteau:

R1 R2
= R1 S1 + S2 R2

liger ‘a hybrid of lion and tiger’
= li on + ti ger (with –on and ti– omitted)

Sharing doesn’t have to involve material in the middle; it could also have the shared material at the end, on the right; or at the beginning, on the left. Here, with two invented examples:

— sharing right portmanteau:

R1 R2 S
= R1 S + R2 S

coleohelicopter ‘a cross between a beetle and a winged vehicle’
= coleopter + helicopter

— sharing left portmanteau:

S R1 R2
= S R1 + S R2

pentagonguin ‘a five-sided flightless bird’
= pentagon + penguin

And now, with the sharing right portmanteau, we are back to 10-W40 in #1.

 

This entry was posted on April 22, 2025 at 1:33 pm and is filed under Language play, Movies and tv, 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.