Was an orange ever a "norange"? | PORTMANTEAUS & WORD MASHUPS
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 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/...
or search for "Words Unravelled" wherever you get your podcasts.
==LINKS==
Rob's RUclips channel: / robwords
Jess' Useless Etymology blog: uselessetymolo...
Rob on X: x.com/robwordsyt
Jess on TikTok: tiktok.com/@jesszafarris
#etymology #wordfacts #English
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 never heard this before but I have gleefully added it to my lexicon! I'm not tech savvy or mechanically minded, so a lot of things work automagically in my world!😀
OH ! I really like that one,
I also like the automagic-adjacent Automangle, which is what I call autocorrect, since it is automatic but often does not properly correct 😂
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.
I can think of at least one US politician with an imperiority complex. Not just in buildings but also in his policies.
I remember the Nissan Micra ad and we referred to the car as fugly!
Another great portmanteau! 😆
I drank too much cider and now I'm in ciderspace.
Very recently found your channel, and I'm enjoying it very much!
In college, I chose to take Etymology as an elective!
❤️
I just received some book entitled Words from Hell. Made me think of "some" when I wrote that in my grumpy old guy voice , being playful.
Funny you should have this episode as I was having dinner with a friend the other day and I was saying that I was sad there doesn't seem to be a word or phrase for "preferring the company of a particular gender" that doesn't secretly mean you are gay or heterosexual. My friend coined the portmanteau "homofriendual", although the jury is still out if "homofriendual" means prefers the company of your own gender or is rather used in the ironic sense that "homofriendual" means prefers the company of the opposite gender, primarily because homosexual has a political association on top of the literal association.
I love this one. - JZ
I'd use purty rather for a cat than a dog. It's (arguably) pretty and it purrs.
My ex used to say "don't disminish me" when she was arguing with someone and she thought they weren't listening attentively enough to her argument or were looking down on her, I never found out whether she she meant dismiss or diminish.
Growing up in 1970s Texas, we had "chixapoo" dogs, careless female chihuahua parents who got a surprise when a neighborhood poodle dog found a weak spot in a fence.
“A lot of fruits and vegetables have been called apples in the past.”
An interesting example is pineapple. Originally, this was the fruit of the pine tree- what we now call pine cones.
When a certain tropical fruit was introduced to the world, it was noted that the pattern on its skin resembles the fruit of the pine, so it was named pineapple.
(Botanists may tell us that it’s not really a fruit, but we’ll let that slide.)
Which isn't a fruit, pine cones or pineapples? Pretty sure botanists call pineapples a fruit (though pine cones are obviously not).
In men's toilets in older UK pubs you might see the trademarked name of the system that controls the flow of water through large urinals - it was called Cistermiser - which is a combination of cistern, (the water tank / system it controls), miserly (the fact that its purpose is to reduce water wastage) and combined to make a homophone with systemiser - as it is an automatic system. I have always felt that such a clever name deserved to not live only above old, often "fragrant" urinals.
I think pomme use to be more "fruit" than apple. Tomato is pomo d'oro (fruit of gold) in Italian. Pomus, from what I understand was also used as fruit in latin.
Hangry is a useful one, and I've added hanxious and improvised lots of situational h- words and similarly sl- for sleepy.
The problem is that people from certain other countries can't hear the difference between hangry, hungry and sometimes angry
Correction. In Germany an adder is called Kreutzotter. Ottern are a Genus of snakes in the family Vipern ( Viperidae). there's also a family of snakes called Nattern (Colubridae). End of the correction.
This correction is brought to you with the help of wikipedia.
her eyes are unreal and cute af
Jess is ADORKABLE!
I just remembered a friend who wood say either peractly or excisely for your right/you got it. C
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. 😀
and let's not forget the ever popular stupivisor.
For a person who doesn't like horseradish it's horserubbish.
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!
Also a kind of steamer trunk that stood upright and was hinged at the back. Opened up, one side was for hanging clothes, the other equipped with drawers for other essentials.
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!!
BTW, what the two of you are doing here is infotainment. 🙂
I love this one
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.
After hearing this term, I couldn't resist telling a friend she was "Adorkable" She pouted & laughed at the same time. Could anyone come up with a term to describe her reaction? I would guess that new term would be considered some sort of an Oxymoron?
@@SolitaryS glowergiggle??
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!
@@WordsUnravelled The same goes for the Dutch word for hammock, which is hangmat. The original form was hamaca, but it is easy to understand how it changed via ‘hamak’ and ‘hangmak’ to a hanging mat.
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 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.
German is great at compound words. My favorite is Bachfeifengesisht for face needing to be hit. And it's more about personality than looks. But it could be both like how Donald Trump has a Bachfeifengesisht.
Having been a butcher and collector of meat paraphernalia I can assure you, that the hamburger did not begin as a sandwich, but rather as a machine. The meat grinding machine was invented by a German named Karl Friedrich Christian Ludwig Freiherr Drais von Sauerbronn, and they were manufactured in Hamburg Germany. By the mid nineteenth century they found their way into American butcher shops. The name "Hamburg" was cast into the body of its iron frame. Butchers called it the "Hamburg machine", then later, "the Hamburger". In time it came to mean the chopped meat that the machine produced. Occasionally you can still find one at antique sales.
My children ( two girls) refer to my brilliant moustache as a "moustastropre" (Moustache/catastrophe) ... they are aged 6 & 9...
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!
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_nony_mousIt's not a portmanteau, as there is no word overlap at all. It is just a compound word.
Your talk of bridal took me down the path to a bridezilla!
And their speculation about the word "groomal" means there should be a similar word, "groomzilla".
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.
@@conniebruckner8190 nah its still funny
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 see you avoided discussing "Brexit" as a portmanteau. Seperately, a metathesis that annoys the pedant in me is "nucular"
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).
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?
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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 .
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
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.
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.
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!!
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".
Isn't the lute older than that? The lute is mentioned in the Biblical Book of the Psalms ''Praise the Lord on the lute and harp'' [Psalm 150].
Was it played Aloud? 😄
@@michaelhaywood8262 Both facts can be true. The word probably appeared before the Bible was translated into English.
@@michaelhaywood8262 The word in the Bible is lyre which is a type of harp. A lute is a stringed instrument that is closer to a small guitar type instrument.
"She turned me into a newt!" ... "I got better"
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!)
A recent one I really like is "exhaustipated".
“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 .
"Wendsday" has to be one of the most ubiquitous examples of metathesis in English.
To take it a bit farther, why is there even a "d" left in it? I think we could get away with "Wensday" at this point.
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 :)
Ah Thrid, that explains the word thrice, thank you :)
🏳🌈Fantabulous, darling.🌈
I can’t possibly be the only person to arrive at this one: “APPRECIANADO”.
I was trying to explain to someone that while I knew a goodly amount about a particular subject, but I was by no means an expert. I had a great appreciation for it, but I wasn’t an aficionado.
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)
@@musingwithreba9667 nah cuz "groodle" sounds like some even more cringe variation of "groovy"
I was a bit surprised that couple names like Brangelina weren't mentioned. But loved it.❤
My day just suddenly got VERY good when I saw my notification! These videos are wonderful! Please keep them coming❤
Another 3-way portmanteau: Brunner. "BReakfast, lUnch, and diNNER". That's the meal that you thought you were going to eat in the morning, but it took all day long to cook.
I call it "Linner."
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).
DOG BREEDS! Oh how Ienjoy making up dog breeds. For instance I want to breed a Jack Russell terrier with a shih tzu, making it a Jack shi..oh you know where I'm going with this.
"BLEND WORDS" is also a synonym of "Portmanteaux"
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
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)
@@elbarsuk Im pretty sure standard dialects of Norwegian dont have an actual 'w' sound. The sound they use is somewhere inbetween the English 'w' and 'v' sounds.
That was a very old sound change in Old Norse. But some regional dialects still have the true 'w' sound. Its pretty interesting to learn about if ur a soundchange nerd. That sound in particular changes in so many different ways.
Is this related to the Italian scooter (moped) company, Vespa? Could it be that they named the company and their bikes after the small nimble creature that packs a mean sting, the wasp?
@@mortisCZ I never knew the popular Italian motor scooter company name meant wasp. Interesting!
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….😊
It’s Shiny
It’s Bright
It’s Briny!
No, wait…
It’s Shight!
Interesting that jelly-filled doughnuts when I was a boy in Minnesota were called "Bismarks"
paczki
For me, growing up in South Dakota (West River), a bismark was always filled with cream and rectangular while jelly-donuts were smaller and rounder.
I’m surprised a bit that no commenter on “I am a Berliner” elucidated it by comparing it to saying “ I am a Danish.”
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.
An "Ostturduckenham"? Just asking....😅
@@robertwilloughby8050 Been done already and then some. There was a French recipe that started with a spatchcock and finished with a bustard, totalling 20 different birds.
@@zelh5969 Wow. That must have been a sight to see!
While Germans did not take JFK to mean he was a jelly doughnut, part of the reason people think they would have is because he used the indefinite article, when there should not have been an article at all.
A friend worked on Sunday to finish our countertop but he compensated by listening to General Conference talks. He "confrensated."
Annoying + ignoring = ignoying, to annoy someone by ignoring them.
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.
There is this discussion about the German translation for "brunch" (breakfast+lunch) - is it "fressen" (Frühstück+MIttagessen)? Hm - maybe there needs to be a rule that the portemanteau has to create a new word.
Hahaha it would be funny but my people sadly just use more and more terrible Denglisch. A decade or so ago, we marketed a bag you carried around your body and named it body bag much to the amusement of English speakers. More recently, working from home was named home office.
“Groomal? I never heard that word before I listened to Words Unravelled…”
“I don’t know why, it’s a perfectly gromulant word”
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!
The helicopter gets modified with heli added to other things too for things like heliskiing ...
Dr. Bob: Do we have any napples?
Nurse Piggy: Don't you mean apples?
Dr. Bob: No, napples! You put them on pie!
Nurse Piggy: Oh no...
All: Pineapples!
Veterinarian's Hospital: Hawaiian Pig, from Muppet Show Episode 320
I have 355/113 napples.
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.
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.
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).
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).
Wasn't the real point about Kennedy the use of "ein" rather than the specifics of "Berliner"? "Ich bin Berliner." being "I am an inhabitant of Berlin." Adding "ein" makes it grammatically appear to be something other than an inhabitant.
I know I was (almost) assaulted by a German loudly declaiming "Ich bin Pfungster" - not "Ich bin ein Pfungster". (With Pfungster being a local term for an inhabitant of Pfungstadt.)
That's clearly what he meant; "I'm a Berliner too (in spirit)" ... perhaps "Ich bin auch ein Berliner" would have been more precise, but he and his speechwriters were likely going for punchiness (the crowd went wild!).
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.
Two other German demonyms which have become food names are Frankfurter [person from Frankfurt] and Hamburger [one from Hamburg]. IDK what frankfurters and hamburgers [the food items] are called in the German language, or what inhabitants of these cities think of their cities giving their name to a type of sausage or a type of patty.
@@michaelhaywood8262 Hamburgers are called "Hamburger", even in Hamburg; it's basically a reimport from American English.
By contrast, in a significant part of Germany the sausages are called "Wiener" (i.e. _Viennese),_ while in Austria they'd be _Frankfurter_ (and _Wiener_ denotes a different type of sausage entirely). Apparently they were initially offered in Vienna by a butcher who had apprenticed in Frankfurt, if with a somewhat different recipe compared to the traditional one (adding some beef which would not have been possible back in Frankfurt). Confused yet?
There may not be "groomal", but I've certainly seen "spousal".
Another great episode! Looking forward to that color words episode 😊
I grew up in the Deep South of the Mississippi delta. When I was learning a line for a play in college the line was ‘she is very pretty.’ I was saying ‘she is very party.’ In all confidence. I couldn’t hear the difference no matter how many times I was corrected.
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".
All "Labradoodles", "Puggles", etC. are more correctly called "Mongrels". It may displease their owner, but let us call a spade a spade.
A newt is also an eft. Not only rebracketed but the v reanalyzed as u/w.
Nickel, the element, comes from Nick, the devil, because it was a devilishly hard element to separate from other metals.
Well-spotted en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belsnickel .
When I was a kid, my dad took me to the McDonald's drive-thru and while he was ordering he asked me what I wanted on my burger. I had never thought about it even once and I had no clue what the options even were. So I panicked and said "I don't know -- ham?", hoping that was the right answer.
He was like "HAM!? You want ham on your burger?!" And I couldn't fathom how I could possibly be wrong about wanting ham on my hamburger, lol.
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.
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.
@@markbernier8434 My mom definitely uses both of those. My brothers and sisters and I were talking about such things as identifiers of our West River South Dakota accent and also included "idnit" (usually spelled 'isn't it'). Also, 'round here, "you bet!" can mean both "yes" and "you're welcome."
@@arlenesobhani8739 That's now my folks say it.
@@rmdodsonbills Around here, we use "innit."
Many Pokémon names are portmanteaux, or mots-valise as they are called in French. A valise is a suitcase, like a portmanteau. Mane+electric=Manectric, odd+radish=Oddish, deciduous+deadeye=Decidueye. Also in French: salamandre+mèche (wick)=Salamèche (Charmander) for instance. One of my favourites is Archéduc=Decidueye, from archiduc (archduke)+archer+Grand duc (eagle owl)
As a child I called a wheelbarrow - a wheelybout - pity it never caught on with anyone else!
Learn ä & ö letters with superheroes: Batman = bätmän, Spider-Man = spaidömän.
I like how you used the portmanteau "horrific" to talk about the turducken
Is horrific a portmanteau? HORRIble and terriFIC? although generally these are opposites.
@@michaelhaywood8262 horror and terror are synonyms as are horrify and terrify, but horrific and terrific are somehow antonyms. I wish I could tell you why. But my favorite bit about these two words is that in a non-rhotic dialect, they are likely to remain "horrah" and "terrah" but here in America where we are mostly rhotic, they are becoming "whore" and "tear." Similarly, you'll often hear about women checking their look in the mere.
@@rmdodsonbills No wonder American English is becomu=ing more difficult for us Brits to understand!.
@@michaelhaywood8262 There are definitely some British dialects that I can't parse without subtitles :)
@@rmdodsonbills There's a quote that I've seen attributed to Mark Twain, Will Rogers, George Bernard Shaw, and Oscar Wilde: "England and America are two countries separated by a common language."
I really enjoy your videos. I would LOVE a video in which you feature Samuel Clemens AKA Mark Twain, one of THE BEST wordsmiths EVER. Eggcorns galore and much much more. Just a suggestion. 😊
“Flinking” is the pleasurable time spent floating and drinking in the lake