Archive for the ‘Portmanteaus’ Category

Morning wood word

September 18, 2023

(Brief but penis-dense, so not to everyone’s  taste; there are, alas, no images)

My morning name today — a natural for someone as phallically oriented as I am — was pillicock, according to the OED (revised 2006), an archaic BrE word for the penis. A penis word that actually vanished, as a reference to the male organ or any semantic development from that. This despite the fact that it truly contained cock ‘penis’ (the pilli part is etymologically obscure).

(Irrelevantly, my mind went on a dactylic jaunt — pillicock, petticoat, billygoat, jerry-built, marzipan — and from there to a delicious double dactyl, marzipan pillicock. A majestic almond-candy phallus; no doubt someone actually makes these. Or perhaps a sweet-tongued prick, that lying seducer Don Juan in his guise as Captain Marzipan Pillicock.)

I would have expected pillicock to have gone the way of pillock (entirely of obscure etymology), which the OED (revised 2006) tells us started out as

Originally Scottish. The penis. Now English regional (northern) and rare. [1st cite 1568]

But mostly went the way of prick and dick and putz and others in various languages, which went bad, went downhill semantically: pillock has ended up as

Chiefly British colloquial (mildly derogatory). A stupid person; a fool, an idiot. [1st cite 1967]

(And yes, morning wood word is an odd portmanteau of morning wood and morning word. Leading, I suppose, to thoughts of morning wood word and burn stein, morning burn being a novel alternative to razor burn. Ok, I’ll stop.)

Original Rockers

September 16, 2023

“Original Rockers”: Wayno’s title for yesterday’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro; the published title “AC/BC” is a pun on the name AC/DC (for the rock band), cavemen being from a great many years BCE


(#1) Lead guitar with caveman backup (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page)

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Manscape architects

September 6, 2023

The background, from 9/3 in my posting “Manscaping your junk”:

A tv spot ad (only 15 seconds long) for the Gillette Intimate Manscape Kit (Gillette Intimate Pubic Hair Trimmer, Gillette Intimate Pubic Hair Razor, Gillette Intimate Pubic Shave Cream + Cleanser), released at least twice, under different titles:


(#1) The Gillette Intimate Manscape Kit

— ‘It’s Not Junk, so Treat It Right’  [apparently it’s your “pubic region” instead], published 10/31/22

— “Respect Your Junk!”, published 3/11/23

Two matters of linguistic interest here: the noun manscaping and verb manscape; and the noun junk ‘male genitals’. The material I’ve collected on these is extensive enough that I’m not going to try to cram it all into one posting, but will split things in two, in follow-up postings on the noun junk and on the noun manscaping / the verb manscape.

The first of these I did two days go (on 9/4), in my posting “From the genital junkyard”. Today it’s manscaping day. Just to remind you, my focus is on vocabulary — the noun manscaping and the verb manscape — not on the practices this vocabulary refers to, of trimming, shaving, and removing male pubic hair.

Nevertheless, the practices provide the background, so a few words on them are in order.

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From the annals of political portmanteauing

August 25, 2023

(This is very much a Mary, Queen of Scots, Not Dead Yet posting — coming after two days in which I was almost totally felled by the humid heat we’ve been experiencing (though I did get in a much-needed shower at 2 in the morning yesterday), and barely functioned. All this sadly in utter solitude: not a word with another human being between two exchanges with caregivers, on Saturday morning and yesterday afternoon.)

… with a note on Stanley Kubrick’s directorial techniques.

First, Don Boorleone.

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niblings

August 15, 2023

Provoked by the Merriam-Webster site‘s “Words We’re Watching: ‘Nibling’: An efficient word for your sibling’s kids”: some reflections on the portmanteauing that gives rise to nibling ‘niece or nephew, sibling’s child’; on “having a word for X in language L”; and on neologism and its discontents.

First, the fun. There’s a book for kids, and there’s a t-shirt for kids, too.

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DONUT BURGER

August 13, 2023

The donut burger is the centerpiece of a photo on Jenny Marinello’s Facebook page on 8/5, from the Ohio State Fair (the booth in the photo also touts Philly fries and butt fries, which will require some explication for many readers). The sign on the booth reassures us that these are real, fresh donuts, and we are in fact looking at shamelessly sweet and sticky glazed donuts here, not some earnest wimpy-hippie fried dough:


The DONUT BURGER, a burger with doughnuts for buns: not, it turns out, just some freakish state fair attraction, but a genuine cultural thing

Now, brief notes: on hybrid food, with and without portmanteau names (the donut burger currently lacks one); and then on six places around the SF BayArea where you can get donut burgers (the glazed donut as bun is standard). So far as I know, they aren’t available in chain burger places, and the fashion for them might pass, but then again they might be a coming thing.

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vière

August 11, 2023

In the current issue of the New Yorker, in the Talk of the Town section, a Paris Postcard by Lauren Collins: on-line on 8/7, with the title “Bartender, There’s a Beer in My Wine: Paris has been blanketed by posters for vière, a mix of vin and bière drunk from a wineglass, whose name, its creators say, started out as a joke”; in print on 8/14, with the title “Vière here” — about the hybrid beverage with a portmanteau name. Beginning:

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Barthropods seeking silverfish

August 8, 2023

Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro, a complex composition in which two centipedes look for bar snacks:


(#1) First bit of language play: the portmanteau barthropod = bar + arthropod, centipedes being arthropods, creatures in the gigantic phylum Arthropoda — also encompassing insects (including silverfish and springtails as well as flies, butterflies and moths, beetles, and more), spiders. crustaceans (among them, shrimp, crabs, lobsters, and barnacles), and millipedes (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)

Then there’s a more subtle bit of language play in silverfish serving as bar snacks in a world in which centipedes drink in bars — given that Goldfish crackers (gold fish, silver fish, bring out the bronze) are often served as bar snacks in the real world.

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muggy

July 29, 2023

From Tim Evanson (in Cleveland OH) on Facebook this morning:

Whew, it’s muggy out here….

I’ll get to the weather in Cleveland in a little while, but first, about the word muggy.

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Nanabots

July 17, 2023

Today’s whimsical Wayno / Piraro Bizarro:

(if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)

A complex bit of wordplay here, which involves a chain of nouns — nanotechnology, nano, and nanobot — and then the combination of the nouns nana ‘granny’ and robot the way nano and robot are combined in nanobot. So: nanabot ‘granny robot, robot granny’. The nanabots in the cartoon are doing culturally conventional things for solicitous grandmothers: baking cookies, inviting the kid to visit, knitting a scarf, giving the kid some money for candy.

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