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Cowboy POP
Today’s Rhymes With Orange: It’s been a while since we had a POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau), but here’s a cute one (Hilary Price is fond of them): prairie dog + dog walker = prairie dog walker,...
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Flagging Marcomentum
This was just a week ago, which can be a long time in political life. In the NYT Magazine on March 6th, on p. 15, in the piece “Inside Out” by Mark Leibovich: I was traveling with [Marco] Rubio in...
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Two Thursday cartoons
From my King Features feed today, two cartoons of linguistic interest: a Mother Goose and Grimm with a POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau) and a Zippy that happens to use a playful verb with, it turns...
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Christomanteaus
From Tim Stewart on ADS-L, a posting linking to a 1/25/13 report on a project on his Dictionary of Christianese site (“The casual slang of the Christian church… authoritatively defined”), on “blended...
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Klimt Eastwood
Posted recently on Facebook, this visual mashup of Gustav Klimt (Adele Bloch-Bauer I, 1907) and Clint Eastwood (as the Man With No Name): (#1) Note the name, a kind of portmanteau of Klimt and Clint...
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More Peepshi
Jeff Shaumeyer on Facebook points us to a new piece on Serious Eats, “Peepshi: The Next Generation” by Niki Achitoff-Gray on 3/21/16, the latest of the Peepshi (Peeps + sushi] postings there (on an...
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On the brocabulary watch: brocialist
Reported on ADS-L yesterday by Garson O’Toole, a posting “A word for calling out sexism” by Ben Silverman on the Socialist Worker website on 11/12/13: In a recent and excellent exchange between Laurie...
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POP goes the bargain
The Rhymes With Orange from a few days ago: Hilary Price is fond of POPs (phrasal overlap portmanteaus), and here’s another: distracted driving + driving a hard bargain. The customer is distracted from...
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Surreal mud in CT
Today’s Zippy takes us to Groton CT: (#1) Our Pinhead is holed up in Norm’s Diner in Groton: (#2) A classic diner, with (apparently) a loyal clintele. It closed for a while in 2008, then re-opened...
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Bad bro days
The story of the address term bro in relatively recent years begins with its use by black men to black men, roughly (but not exactly) like the widely used American buddy — a term of male affiliation....
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A fine commercial portmanteau
This week’s excellent potmanteau: Armachillo clothing from Duluth Trading Co.: ARMADILLO (for its tough protective scales) + CHILL (for cooling ability), with CHILL put iside ARMADILLO (ARMA – DILL –...
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Monday language comics
Two Monday comics on linguistic topics: a Calvin and Hobbes with an unfortunate ambiguity (pitch the tent), and a Zits with a portmanteau for a combo sport (dodgebowl): (#1) (#2) Pitch the tent. The...
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On the Hi-Lo
Some men go on the down-low, but Zippy goes on the Hi-Lo. Yesterday’s strip is set in the diner of this name in Minneapolis MN: (#1) Seen here in a recent photo: (#2) Taken up later: grilling and...
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Gerard Hoffnung
Like Thurber, Sendak, Briggs, and some others I’ve written about, another cartoonist / illustrator not generally accounted to be a Real Artist (perhaps at best a “graphic artist” like Bechdel) —...
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Jeff Hobbs
In the June 2016 issue of Funny Times, a bit of language play, portmanteauing Oreos (referring to the brand of creme-filled chocolate cookie sandwiches) and areolas (referring to the rings of pigmented...
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Frenemones
In the July 2016 Funny Times, this punning cartoon by Australian cartoonist Judy Horacek: Layered portmanteaus: frenemy (friend + enemy) + anemone. Frenemy from NOAD2: ‘a person with whom one is...
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Word times: two Ruthies, three Psychs
Annals of lexical confusions and innovations. Two word problems from Ruthie in the cartoon One Big Happy (two recent strips), a word confusion and two innovations from the tv show Psych. Ruthie faces...
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Bob Eckstein
On the occasion of my posting a Bob Eckstein (“bob”) cartoon (#1 in 6/22/16, “Two tests in cartoon understanding”), the cartoonist has friended me on Facebook (earlier Eckstein from 5/30/15, “Earworms,...
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Leaving, in tears and a portmanteau
Passed on by Facebook friends (especially Arthur Prokosch), this Dan Wasserman editorial cartoon in the Boston Globe on the 16th: Here we are in Portmantexia, a land of words in –exit, –leave, and...
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Two cat cartoons
Not quite what you think. Two cartoons: a Mother Goose and Grimm from yesterday, today’s Bizarro: (#1) (#2) To appreciate #1, you need to know about the custom of putting out a cat for the night (V +...
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