(Today has been difficult, so this is the best I can do in the way of posting — opening up a topic for further postings, soon to come.)
It starts with this memic shoeshi image I encountered today on Facebook, passed on through various friends and acquaintances, as these things are. A truly wonderful composition:
The memic shoeshi; shoeshi here is a punmanteau: a pun and a portmanteau
From my 11/15/23 posting “The punmanteau”, about cummerbundt in an entertaining Bizarro cartoon:
a bit of language play that cuts across two categories of play: it’s a pun based on a portmanteau, a punmanteau. A cummerbund in the shape of a Bundt cake (Bundt punning on –bund), with a name that’s a [complex] portmanteau of the names for those two things; cummerbund + Bundt (cake) = cummerbundt
In the memic image on Facebook, we have sushi in the shape of a shoe (shoe punning on su-), with a name that’s a (complex) portmanteau of the names for those two things: shoe + sushi = shoeshi. The memic shoeshi is a work of art, made (mostly) from food; it is neither edible nor wearable — though it could be deconstructed, and some of its materials eaten.
In other occurrences, shoeshi is in fact food — edible sushi in the shape of a shoe.
In still others, shoeshi is in fact footgear — footwear in the shape of sushi.
And they’re for another day.