Was an orange ever a "norange"? | PORTMANTEAUS & WORD MASHUPS
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- čas přidán 20. 05. 2024
- Hello and welcome (or should that be hellcome?) to another Words Unravelled. In this episode, Rob and Jess discuss word mash-ups.
- 🍊Was an orange ever a norange?
- 🍔 Why do cheeseburgers make no sense?
- ❓Is it okay to "aks" instead of "ask"?
These questions answered and many more as we explore portmanteaus, rebracketing and metathesis.
👂LISTEN: podfollow.com/words-unravelle...
or search for "Words Unravelled" wherever you get your podcasts.
==LINKS==
Rob's CZcams channel: / robwords
Jess' Useless Etymology blog: uselessetymology.com/
Rob on X: x.com/robwordsyt
Jess on TikTok: tiktok.com/@jesszafarris
#etymology #wordfacts #English
My wife created a portmanteau the other day. When her supervisor was not in office but asked another to see who was at work, she calls that second supervisor a "snoopervisor."
That one seems to be independently coined quite regularly.
It sounds like a Freudian slip. 😀
I like the word Automagically, something that works automatically but you don't understand why or how.
It's one of my favourites as well 😊
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. A.C. Clarke.
I had a bit of fun once with the Deliveroo driver. He knocked on my door and when I answered he said 'Takeaway Delivery'. I replied that I thought I had cancelled my Oxymoron subscription a while ago, he stared at me so I smiled, took the bag and closed the door. Some fall on stony ground!
The original portmanteau suitcases had two separate compartments divided by a canvas panel. This would have been well known to Carroll's readers, so they would have found the connection obvious. 😉
Neat, thank you!
Adorkable is a perfect description. Thanks for keeping me smiling and laughing, and learning.
Thank you for listening!
They both are very adorkable! 🙂
Adorkable word-stirrers.
My favorite portmanteau is procrastiworking - doing irrelevant tasks to put off doing the thing you are supposed to be doing. Yesterday my son cleaned his room to put off studying for his math test.
Ooo I love that, I do that all the time myself. Sorry, those dirty dishes will have to stay in the sink a while longer, I have to fix this creaky staircase. I'd like to use this excellent word myself!
Ha ha ha! I was doing that at work today 😂
I feel seen...
I've heard a similar one from someone who was meant to be studying: Procrastobaking.
I love that.
I used to ‘procrastiwork’ most mornings when I first sat at my work desk, putting off work that needed cognitive abilities until I had fully woken. Then, about 11 am, I would be ready to handle anything.
Please never cancel this podcast! 💜
I mean it'll end when they run out of ideas like every other one lol.
@@donwald3436 The subject is pretty vast, I can see it going on for a while
@@Syiepherze Been writing about it for 15 years and haven't run out of material yet! - JZ
I am lapping up these videos like a starving pooch.
@@BillPatten-zh6lxor, you could be cramming them down your throat like a coniferous canine.
I think a word like ginormous is a matter of multiplying through redundancy. Not just enormous, not just gigantic, it's ginormous!
Ginormous is a word I use quite frequently. Usually as an exaggeration!
I would never describe your podcast as craptacular, because it's rather fantabulous.
...or craptastic is a similar one. 😀
This ws definitely a fun video, though!!
The favorite portmanteau from German is verschlimmbessern (from verbessern = make better, and verschlimmern = make worse), describing an action that was intended to improve something, probably succeeding to some extent, but at the same time making it worse at another part.
Your talk of bridal took me down the path to a bridezilla!
Since you mentioned Arabic "Al"....The Arabs brought a string instrument called an "oud" with them to Spain in the Middle Ages. As it became popular in Europe, the name changed over time from the Arabic "Al Oud" to "A Lute".
My children ( two girls) refer to my brilliant moustache as a "moustastropre" (Moustache/catastrophe) ... they are aged 6 & 9...
How about the best known and most commonly used portmanteau of all? I mean “smog”!
I think how often that's used is region-dependent. I imagine Londoners use it a lot, but I don't hear it much elsewhere.
The lost common portmanteau of recent times is surely 'Brexit!'
@@PhilipWorthington "Smog" is common in southern California, but it refers to a different kind of air pollution. California smog is primarily photochemically-produced ozone, rather than the London Smog, which I understand was coal smoke containing sulfur dioxide--no sunshine required.
@@PhilipWorthington Smog is widely used in North America to refer to visible, hazy air pollution, regardless of water content
You all forgot about breakfast = break + fast
A quite interesting additional case of metathesis:
'Hangnail' is a folk etymological warping of the original Middle English 'agnail' (based on the misapprehension that the word combined 'nail' and 'hang'), while 'agnail' itself descends metathetically from Old English 'angnæl', in which the 'ang' part means "tight/painful" and is cognate with the 'ang' part of 'anguish', 'anxiety', 'angst', and so on...
Fantastic example!
I routinely use "confuzzle(d)" (confuse(d) + puzzle(d)). I invented it myself, but I've seen it used by other people who didn't get it from me, so there's no telling how many inventors it has.
Our family uses it too
A Heffalump or Woozle
Is very confusel
The Heffalump or woozle's very sly - sly, sly, sly
Winnie the Pooh - 1977 😄
I have a similar story. As a kid I invented "geniacle" (Genius + Maniacle). So the actions of a genius are geniacle. I first used it when I was out with my uncle and the engine had a catastrophic failure in the middle of nowhere. His solution was to carefully remove the sump (so retaining the oil) then stripping down the engine from below, he removed the offending piston. Finally he was able to restart the engine and it got us home with the remaining three cylinders. (it didn't even run that bad) Obviously I felt such a feat was absolutely "geniacle".
It caught on in my family but on very rare occaisions I've heard it used by someone with no connection to my family. It's just a form of homoplasy.
Some of these leave me confusticated.
I generally thought of confuzzled as a mixture of confused and fuzzy (as in fuzzy maths or brain fuzz).
A modern re bracketing that I’ve heard a lot is changing “another” to “a nother”, usually inserting the word “whole” in between, to create “a whole nother”, instead of an whole other
Great example, love this
Exactly the example I was thinking of
"a whole other"? 😁
@@caramelldansen2204 yes that would get rid of the ‘n’ altogether, but people are simply re-bracketing it, splitting it from ‘an’ and attaching it to ‘other’. I’m with you- get rid of the N altogether and you don’t need to worry about it 😆
@@locodiver8665 sure, but I meant you said "an whole" at the end of your original comment :)
My favorite portmanteau that I came up with while visiting the imperial palace in Wien, was "imperiority complex", to describe the "compensating" opulence of the Emperor
OH I love that, and I will start using it. I live in Vienna.
My favorite is oblivacation.
We also have the American English suffix for scandals -gate, from Watergate.
yes, true, and I do not like that at all.
Great example!
I’m in Australia, and -gate has become the same suffix here.
@@conniebruckner8190 One does grow tired of it.
My husband has a portmanteau he invented by accident (as English is his second language). He says 'stragedy', combining strategy and tragedy. It may have been said accidentally at first, but he uses it proudly now.
I like it! Would it be used after loosing at chess for example?
..and of course the portmanteau forever associated with a former US president, "strategery".
I always thought the english rule was to change to "an" in front of a vowel. I love learning the history of my first language.
I thought "doodle" must have come from a different place because of the songs, "Yankee doodle", and "I'm a yankee doodle dandy"..
I enjoy changing the pronunciation of words into metathasase (?) . For instance, I will change "comfortable" to comvertible", as in a "comfortable convertible" automobile.
One of my favorites is "stiction", coined around 1990 to describ a problem with Seagate hard drives where the parked heads stuck to the platters and kept the drive from spinning up.
I remember "stiction" from at least the 1970s as the "static friction", because it often requires more force to start sliding something (overcome the stiction") than the force to keep it moving (the "regular" friction).
In music there is a feature called portamento- sliding from one note to another. The word is from Italian, as are most musical terms.
But getting back to portmanteau in language, I can give you some examples. Someone was describing how some papers were scattered about, and he went around trying to scalvage them. He was blending scavenge and salvage.
And when I take my dog for a walk, I refer to it as giving her a poopertunity.
I once said "Carmel" instead of "Caramel" to a British friend.
He exclaimed, "Carmel? Carmel? It's Caramel. There's a perfectly good A in the middle of that word and you Americans insist on leaving it out."
I countered, "How do you say battery?"
He replied, "Battry." Oh! never mind."
Carmel is Biblical. It is the Hebrew word for garden. Hence the cities of Carmel, California and Carmel, Indiana
American here, I've always heard the A in the middle of caramel pronounced, distinct from the place name Carmel
As an American, I prefer to say cärməl. I enjoyed a caramel candy earlier today! Lol
You could also have asked him how he pronounced secretary. Although it's beginning to die out, older Brits ignore the final A and pronounce it SEC-ruh-tree. Same with military. And library. It really is pointless trying to apply logic to pronunciation of English words in order to win an argument 🙂
This American says car-a-mel always.
Regarding vacations - I feel like "staycation" is a proper portmanteau, with stay and vacation being the combined words. However, I wonder if the popularization of that term has led to "cation" being rebracketed (since the root is "vacare") to mean any kind of leisure trip - I've seen cruises marketed as "Seacations" for example.
In Scotland we have the holiday destination of Hameldaeme when you aren't going anywhere. ( Home will do me )
Definitely! Great rebracketing example. - JZ
@@auldfouter8661 We have the expression of staying at home as going to "Balkonien" Was often used during lockdowns.
Seacation is apalling. Isn't that just a voyage or a cruise? Marketers have no respect for language.
10:49 “[gerrymander] is named for Elbridge Gerry” now I understand why you pronounce gerrymander wrong, you also pronounce Gerry wrong. It’s pronounced with the same hard G sound as the surname Getty, not the soft G of giant.
I wonder if people pronounce Gerry’s name wrong because they hear gerrymander pronounced wrong, and knowing that that is a portmanteau, assume that Gerry is (very inexplicably) pronounced with a soft g?
Rob and Jess - Thanks for creating this channel. I was always a science/logic/analytics guy, but now that I'm retired, I find that I'm fascinated by language. (Who would have thought?) I really enjoy learning about words and their origins. You do a fantastic job of educating and entertaining. Keep up the good work!!
You can find the term doughnut in one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, "Farmer Boy", which chronicles her husband Alonzo's early life in upper New York state. The passage depicts the family deep frying these tender morsels. The dough was placed in a deep vat of melted lard and when the one side was fried it automatically turned itself to fry the other side. She specifies in horror how city folk were putting holes in them. The passage caused me to realize why doughnuts were called doughnuts in the first place.
It's the reason why WWI soldiers were known as doughboys, from the doughnuts and coffee handed out to soldiers by lady volunteers at the ports
Doughnuts were originally dough naughts, naught = zero .
I lived in Germany for over 2 years (not Berlin, but northern Baden-Württemberg) and the only peoole I've ever met who claim Kennedy said "I am a donut" were English speaking non-Germans.
I like how you used the portmanteau "horrific" to talk about the turducken
"She turned me into a newt!" ... "I got better"
If you've ever bought property, there are stacks of paperwork to sign.
I am up with "Carpal Title Syndrome".
The Title agent laughed at that.
The case of "bridal" is quite interesting. In Danish we still have the concept of "gravøl" litterally "grave ale/beer" which is a wake or a gathering with or without something to eat/drink after a funeral and "fyraftensøl" wich means something to the effect of "a beer after work" even though is dosn't need to involve beer. Maybe that's the same thing.
This is so cool! I had been looking for similar concepts and hadn't yet found any. Thanks for sharing. - JZ
A recent one I really like is "exhaustipated".
The "pter" like you see in pterodactyl (wing finger) is also in the scientific name for bats (my favorite animal). It's "chiroptera" (chiro/cheir + ptera = hand wing)... next time you see a bat with wings spread, notice how there are four bony "fingers" in the wing and the thumb that sticks up at the top. I never thought about it being part of helicopter, though... love it! On portmanteaus(x?), would Benelux be considered a triple threat? Also, I have used the word gription (like grip + traction) for 35+ years and I tend to forget it's not actually a word. I will pretty much make a portmanteau of any two words that force me to say the same syllable twice (at the end of the first and the beginning of the second). Ain't nobody got time for that!
Pedantic note: The Swedish ö is not an o with umlauts (they really don't even know that word unless they know German). It's not a diacritic like in German... it's an entirely separate letter/character that comes at the end of the alphabet: ABCD...XYZÅÄÖ. My Swedish family is adamant about that.
Well done with Benelux. It only uses the starting parts of the three place names, so therefore might not technically be considered a portmanteau word, but I would definitely give you the triple word score.
We used to say "gription" when I was a lad. My friend Joe coined it (or at least brought it into the friend circle). It's a pity it's not spread far and wide enough to be a known and accepted dictionary word.
Pterodactyl(us) and pteranodon ("toothless wing") are both genera of pterosaurs (wing lizard). (Not dinosaurs!)
In Bavarian (and probably other German dialects as well) a wasp is called Weps just like in Old English. In High German its Wespe.
Italians call the same insect vespa.
Dutch: wesp. Norwegian: veps (v pronounced as w)
This channel should have so many more subscriptions.
Or superscptions?
Likes and subscriptions! Likescriptions.
Scriptliketions.
Lewis Carroll.
The British newspaper cartoon strip The Perishers. The kids in it used to talk of A Norse (A horse) and Another Rorse (another horse). Sort of a joke for of de-bracketing :)
You guys are the adorkable etymological teamup I didn't know I needed in my life. Just downoaded Jess's book.
Thank you! I hope you enjoy! - JZ
“Flinking” is the pleasurable time spent floating and drinking in the lake
Thought you might be interested to know that In Australia dog breeds crossed with poodles are known as “oodles”. So Shihpoo is Shoodle (not to be confused with the Schnoodle) a Cockapoo is a Spoodle, a Cavapoo is Cavoodle and a Goldendoodle is a Groodle.
Probably helped by the fact that, in Australia, “doodle” is a term for male genitalia.
This is fantastic knowledge, thank you! - JZ
I much prefer the Australian "Groodle" over the North American "Golden Doodle" which is just...ugh...😝 Whenever I see one, I tell the human at the other end of the leash that Grrodle makes so much more sense, and so far, that have all agreed, so hopefully, it will change here.
Or maybe we can just call all of them mutts! 😉🤣
@@musingwithreba9667 Thing is, the word "doodle" has come to be a collective for any of the -doodle breeds. Labradoodle, Goldendoodle, Sheepadoodle, and so forth. If you google "doodle dog" you will find tons of pages that talk about doodles as a group. (add "dog" to differentiate from intentional scribbling)
Many years ago when my children were little I invented the word SHIME. It is a mash-up, as you put it, Rob, of Short and Time and I used it instead of saying "I will be there in a second" or "I'll do that in a minute." I would say I will be there in a shime or I will do that in a shime. So, Shime is defined as an undetermined short period of time.
My day just suddenly got VERY good when I saw my notification! These videos are wonderful! Please keep them coming❤
A friend of mine recently post a college graduation photo of herself on social media. According to the caption she included with the photo, she had graduated exactly 10 years ago on date she posted the photo. To honor her, I wished her a "Happy Graduversary."
Much to the chagrin of spellchecker I like to use the one word "conGRADulations" and/or omit the "L" and "S".🎉😮
“Wasp” almost certainly derives from Latin “vespa” which might have corrected the metathesis.
It actually derives from an Aryan word which is cognate with Latin "vespa".
However, the relative of Old English wæps survives to this day in the Bavarian dialect as 'der Weps' for the wasp... Or maybe it's just a coincidence .
My daughter coined in the urban dictionary the word “RUGSOME” defined as “RUGGEDLY-HANDSOME”.
I love it!
On the same subject of hair, I occasionally hear the use of the word, "beardstache" used for the word "goatee".
I was a bit surprised that couple names like Brangelina weren't mentioned. But loved it.❤
Terrific video! I’m really loving the pairing of you two - a kind of portmanteau mash-up of posh Brit and American girl-next-door “adorkables”. Jess, you remind me so much of the character Stevie Budd (from the series “Schitt’s Creek”), played by actress Emily Hampshire. Please keep this collaboration going. It’s such a treat!
John Madden (the famous NFL head coach) made the turducken famous as he would show them every Thanksgiving during the broadcast of the Thanksgiving Day games and other games throughout the season.
A friend worked on Sunday to finish our countertop but he compensated by listening to General Conference talks. He "confrensated."
Here's one from the working-class Midwest US that always tickled me growing up, favored by my father and grandfather, that is both metathesis and portmanteau: "Pertner" meaning "pretty nearly" or "pretty near," like "that wreck pertner killed him" or "I was pertner home when it started raining."
Did they also use druthers?
I always spelled that purtnear, as in purty near.
Another great episode! Looking forward to that color words episode 😊
My favorite portmanteu is from a quiz show where each category is represented by a character, sometimes partially animal based. So of course the category is called Portmantoad.
I am French and enjoys Robwords and Words Unravelled. In everyday french, porte-manteau is a coat hanger (also called "cintre" in french, but both are frequent). I have heard "porte manteau" used as a person who takes the shame for someone else, as a manteau would cover the original thing.
I recently read about a new relationship word: a situationship.
This is where the parties are in a situation which has not yet reached the level of a relationship.
So we in America have now upped the Turducken. Add a small ham the middle and you now have “Turduckenham”
They play rugby there.
Use an octopus instead of a chicken and duck and you have a Turcthulhu.
Dear Jess & Rob, you can have great fun looking at the names of Pokemons. So many of these are portmanteaus, in several different languages :-) Venusaur, Charmelon, Herbizarre, Carapuce, etc :-)
The word Pokemon itself is one, from pocket monster
@@wardsdotnet Kind of, but it is really more just an abbreviation. The Japanese love to abbreviate everything.
Interesting that jelly-filled doughnuts when I was a boy in Minnesota were called "Bismarks"
paczki
Or ports manteau? 😉 I love the way you two do this together. You are both fascinating on your own, but particularly amazing together.
You're so adorable together, such a great mashup.
Rob the pronounciation of "öknamn" was very good.
While there is an umlaut on ö it is a separate letter and not a version of o.
I must be utterly adorkable because I love this.
In German, while "Spitzname" (a name that can hurt) is more common now, in older books you can find "Neckname" as well, related to the verb "necken" (=to tease).As for the orange, while the word "Orange" is used is Geman as well, the older word "Apfelsine" (="Chinese apple", derived from dutch "appelsien" oder "sinaasappel") is equally common. (It's only used for the fruit, though, not the color).
I have always assumes that 'nap' for cloth relates to napkin, napsack and nappy. Thank you for bringing in the 'napron' connection too!
A portmanteau I rather like, being an uncle to dozens of my siblings’ children/grandchildren/great-grandchildren is this: nibling. It’s a combination of nephew (or niece) and sibling. It’s a collective term for nephews and nieces, just like siblings are brothers and sisters collectively.
And a very useful word it is! Now we need one for uncles and aunts collectively.
I don't know... sounds a lot like nibble.
As a young child, I would be told we were going for a walk in the 'graveyard', but sometimes my parents would call it the 'cemetery', so for years I called it the 'gravelly'
Did you "gravely read the stones?" ;-) czcams.com/video/dfXqxjMkyQ4/video.htmlsi=pju3YJ7-7OCJArAe
Pomodoro (tomato) is golden apple 😊
Like those from economics, they are a bit unsatisfying, but meteorology has given us snowpocalypse and snowmageddon. And along the lines of multiverse, in science-fiction and comic fandom we also have omniverse, for all the universes or multiverses.
I was in Chicago for the 2011 Snowmageddon. I climbed out of my apartment's second-story window directly onto a snow drift! - JZ
How does "university" fit,...or not.
Orange, the fruit, is "apelsin" (apple from china), but we already had the colour orange: Brandgul (brand+gul = fire yellow) 🙂
My mom had a habit of accidentally making portmanteaus. The one I remember is “slaunter” a mix of saunter and slander, which for us now describes someone who lazily walks to go do something.
Just a heads-up about gerrymandering; Elbridge Gerry pronounced his last name with a hard G, so while the portmanteau named for him has been corrupted to a soft G, his name still gets the hard G
You know, I knew that. I have an older TikTok video about this subject in which I pronounced it correctly. The information must have vacated my brain during this recording. - JZ
@@WordsUnravelled it could be worse; my wife grew up just north of Boston where he spent much of his adult life, so she doesn't even like it when I use the soft G on gerrymandering 🤣
@@adamwhite2364 y’all in Boston pronounce your basketball team wrong so….😊
Beautiful Rob, thats how you say 🎶öknamn🎶 in some dialects of swedish. Never heard an englishspeaker get it right before😍
Your conversations are just marvellous. Please keep 'em coming. And I "LOVED" the story about merging Greek surnames, so cute.
A derivative of the turducken is another food portmanteau: the cherpumple cake. Cherry, pumpkin, and apple pies are cooked completely, and then each is baked inside a cake layer. Then the whole thing is stacked up and frosted/iced.
🤨🙄🥴😵💫
I love misheard things (The Two Ronnies - Four Candles) 😊
thanks!! I'm going to start saying Shiny-Bright as a euphemism now!!
Two things I wanna note here: No. 1: As a musician I was screaming the word "portamento" at my screen, which is when you merge two notes together (think "pitch shift"). I think that would've made things a lot clearer. Second thing is about the word "apple"/"pom", which I believe just means "fruit". Aside from the ones you mentioned, in German there is another word for orange, "Apfelsine", meaning "Chinese apple", in Italian you get "pomodoro", the "golden apple", and even in English we have an apple that looks like a pine cone. Etymologically, every other fruit is basically just an apple with some sort of discriminator. Even if doesn't seem like it at first (e.g. "melon"), if you trace it back far enough, in the end it almost always ends up being an apple of some kind.
Pineapple = pine + fruit, and a pineapple looks like a pine cone. I'd never thought of that! Thank you!!
My favorite portmanteau is a nonsensical word that comes from the British parody show Look Around You. In a scene, ants build an igloo and the narrator thanks them, coining the term "Thants".
Oh we have that wasp/waps thing in German too! Standard German would be "Wespe" but in the Bavarian dialect it's "Weps". That was really funny just now, hearing you say something that sounded Bavarian in the middle of an English sentence :)
And in Württemberg the "Weps" becomes a "Wefzg".
I did not know the term portmanteau, but listening to your wonderful podcast, I was reminded of a Joke that a very dear Irish friend of mine told me. If possible, try to read this in a Cork accent.
John and Mary are at home.
It is raining outside.
They are bored.
So John says to Mary:
Mary, would you like to play a guessing game?
Yes, says Mary 't would be great.
I'll start, says John. So listen, I've got a piece of fruit behind my back and I give you one clue: It starts with the letter „N“ and you have three tries.
Mary says, oh I've got it, it's a napple!
Oh no Mary, it's not a napple, but try again, says John.
And Mary says, now I know, you've got a norange behind your back!
Oh no, Mary, says John, 't was a good guess, but try again.
And Mary says, now I'm sure, the piece of fruit that you hold behind your back must be a napricot.
Oh Mary my dear, you are wrong again. And John shows her what was behind his back and says: It's a negg.
Dear Jess and Rob, please continue your wonderful work.
Nickname in Danish is "Øgenavn" - So fairly close to the old English word. We also use "øge" alone and it means increase.
The small piece of embroidered cloth meant to decorate or accentuate furniture is called "napperon" in French. I just love how it became more useful as "apron" in English.
I believe one of my niece's first name actually falls under the category of portmanteau. Her mother's name is Carolyn, and her father's (my brother) name is Stanley, although he often goes by the name Stan.
Anyway, the reason I say this is because her name is Lyndley, lyn (her mother), d (and), ley (her father).
As a recovering grammar snob, I always contest the severe reactions to poisonous vs venemous. In common usage, no one but herpetologists and grammar snobs are bothered by a snake or bug being called poisonous. (Chemists, too, I suppose, since the diff between p and v is first chemical, then delivery system.)
My favorite test of what people truly believe about a word is to tell them there's a poisonous snake near their foot. If they reply "Then I'll be careful not to eat it" I've learned something about their depth of commitment to their snobbery. I mean definition.
Indeed! Are there any poisonous snakes in the strict sense? I think there are both poisonous and venomous arthropods, but for snakes the meaning is clear.
Snake lovers quite take offense to calling a snake poisonous, it's not just grammar snobs.
My kids used to say ‘criliner’ for recliner. They are twins Matthew and Michael and in a hurry I would say Mithew or Macael. So much fun. Thanks for such a fun channel!
Love it!!!! You guys are great!
love this podcast so much!!
There may not be "groomal", but I've certainly seen "spousal".
As a child I called a wheelbarrow - a wheelybout - pity it never caught on with anyone else!
I LOVE insinuendo. Excellent!
Enjoyed the explanations thoroughly. One of the combinations that I always trip over is “an enigma”. I say it in my mind as “Annie Nigma” at least that way my tongue doesn’t trip it over it so much.
I had always assumed apron came from the French napperon, which is some table cloth grandmothers used to knit and put under a plate. The older the grandma became the more napperons she knitted, and they eventually end up everywhere, under the telly, under books or framed pictures, etc.
Ah Thrid, that explains the word thrice, thank you :)
Thank you Jess and Rob
"Bitácora" (log, as in web log) is another example of rebracketing. The original is «l'habitacle» (masc.) which means "the small place where [the log book] inhabits". This was misheard as «la bitacle» (fem.) and borrowed into both Spanish and English. Then the 'l' turned into 'r' in Spanish and the 't' into 'n' into English.
"Alambre" (wire) is a counterexample to the "al-" rule. It's from Latin "aeramen", which became "arame" in Portuguese (not to be confused with the seaweed, which is Japanese).
Is Jess the Susie Dent of America? 😀 She's great. Love these two getting all excited about language. Great fun to follow.
As long as she’s not the ARTHUR DENT of America!
These are so fun! I find it fascinating that I get really excited about a word, and see you both get excited, too. I don't get anything but blank stares in my everyday interactions with people in my life when I express my joy in etymology, and admiration of some words, and dislike of others. Thank you, so much.
Time for a friend upgrade.
Radio personality Gary Owens (also famous for being on the TV show "Laugh-In") coined a portmanteau: insigrievious. He never defined it (he only used it as a nonsense word in his show) but I think of it as "insignificantly grievous".
I have used "a napple" and "a norange" as a joke, not because I thought it was correct. I've also used "flutter by" in place of "butterfly" because of what they do. Butterflies flutter by.
Sometimes people say that a butterfly used to be a flutterby. It's one of those things that I've never checked to see if it's true or not.
Love you guys !!
A newt is also an eft. Not only rebracketed but the v reanalyzed as u/w.
I learned a lot from this funny podcast, and the Dutch word is Sinaasappel for the oranje fruit, and before "Fanta" we still have Sinas 😉
In turn, "Sinalco" is a German brand with the meaning "sin (without) alcohol" nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinalco .
Fascinating topic and very well covered! So nowadays, in French, a portemanteau or porte-manteau is a coat rack more than a box or container but I see that the term is used in English as carrying case. Also, our translation of a "portmanteau word" is a "mot-valise" or a "suitcase word" so that is my favourite interpretation of the term. As for the pluralisation of the word, I agree with the "s" because we spell it with an "e" in the middle, which to me makes the word clearly English.