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Winter POP
A cartoon by David Cohen for the season: A POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau): ice cube + cubicle. Brr. David Cohen is an editorial cartoonist for the Asheville (NC) Citizen-Times.
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Snowtopia
Today’s Zippy, with poignant seasonal nostalgia (Christmas Day snow on nearly deserted streets) along with the usual budget of Zippy oddness (imagined aliens from Neptune, Macadamia nuts, and Perry...
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The noirwhal
Wednesday’s Rhymes With Orange, with a portmanteau/pun: (Film) noir and narwhal. Film noir has come up on this blog several times, in connection with Zippy cartoons about the genre, in particular:...
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The French pastry revolution
Yesterday it was the noirwhal; today on Rhymes With Orange, it’s the French pastry revolution: A complex tissue of puns, portmanteaus, and cultural allusions. Start with the title: French pastry + the...
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Whore-igami
Briefly noted: in the short story “I Can See Right Through You” by Kelly Link in McSweeeney’s No. 48 (2014), on p. 81: Meggie says, “She’s a nice kid. Makes Whore-igami in her spare time and sells it...
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Once -tastic, now -astic
A recent ad for Daedalus books, spotted in the latest issue of Harper’s magazine, and no doubt in other bookish publications: The libfix -tastic, extracted from fantastic, has here been whittled down a...
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Hybrids
Today’s Rhymes With Orange: Cross-species hybrid, portmanteau to do along with it. The model here is the names for mixed-breed dogs: -poo- mixes, of poodle plus something else (yorki(e)poo for poodle +...
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More word confusion
Today’s One Big Happy: Ruthie confuses decaffeinated and decapitated, which I would have thought was an unlikely glitch, since both are relatively rare words (though phonologically very similar) — but...
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Morning name: a playful portmanteau
This morning’s name (which just popped into my head; I’m pretty sure I’d never seen or heard it before) was the playful Elrond Hubbard, which has been adopted by a fair number of people on the net —...
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fraug
Yesterday’s Rhymes With Orange: Presumably Hilary Price’s intention was that the spelling FRAUG, pronounced [frɔ:ɡ], should represent a combination of FROG — pronounced [frɑ:ɡ] or [frɔ:ɡ], depending on...
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Bromancing the Bone
My current favorite gay porn title of the outrageous pun variety: Romancing the Stone > Bromancing the Bone. We start with the portmanteau noun bromance. From Wikipedia: A bromance is a close,...
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cruffin
In yesterday’s NYT, the story “During Bakery Break-In, Only Recipes Are Taken” by Carol Pogash, about the cruffin situation in San Francisco: San Francisco — It takes three days to make a cruffin, a...
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Peeps time in Japan
As Easter approaches (April 5th this year), Peeps naturally come to mind (substantial posting on Peeps here). Peeps are endlessly versatile; here’s Grace Kang on Serious Eats, taking Peeps to Japan, in...
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Today’s POP
Today’s POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau) — student loan shark (student loan + loan shark) — from the April 13th New Yorker: Shanahan on this blog: 7/15/12 (2 cartoons), 2/1/15 (3 cartoons).
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The Big Kowalski
A Liam Francis Walsh cartoon in the latest (April 20th) New Yorker: (#1) A mashup — a kind of portmanteau — of two movies: the 1951 film adaptation of Tennessee Wiliams’s dramatic play A Streetcar...
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Annals of (possible) libfixes: -abelia
In the April 20th New Yorker, a fascinating story of a lost, and eventually found, Tlingit totem pole, in the Our Far-Flung Correspondents category: “The Tallest Trophy: A movie star made off with an...
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Dinosaur connoisseur
Today’s Bizarro, with a portmanteau: Dinosaur + Connoisseur. With some entertaining play on the style of wine writing.
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Invention
Two things came together. One, in response to a query from a reader, I’ve been struggling to compile some sort of list of my terminological innovations, only to discover that a fair number of these...
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In brief: vaguebooking
On my Facebook feed a few days ago, a posting that was incomprehensible because it lacked context that the poster clearly assumed. I asked about this, and friends explained that this was a form of...
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Androids on the march
Sexy Friday continues, with the war between the sexes in today’s Scenes From a Multiverse: First, misogynoids launched against the women, then misandroids launched in retaliation, sowing the...
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