Fun portmanteau words

If you read our previous article about portmanteau words then you’d know what they are, that they are also called Frankenwords (from Frankenstein) and that surprisingly, the term itself was invented by Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland.

We’ve also given you a list of very common portmanteaus, but to refresh your memory, we’ll give you some more examples. For today, we thought of sharing some of the funniest, newest portmanteau words in the English language. Some of these would definitely not exist without the internet but at the same time, if you are a millennial living most of your life online, then you’ve surely seen them before and wondered what they meant.

Vlog= video + blog

Emoticon= emotion + icon

Netflix= internet + flick (“flick” is slang for movie)

Pinterest= pin + interest

Wikipedia= wiki + encyclopedia

Groupon= group + coupon

Malware= malicious + software

Spanglish=Spanish + English

Chillax= chill + relax

Staycation= stay + vacation (it refers to spending your holidays at home, and not going anywhere else)

Flexitarian= flexible + vegetarian (a vegetarian that sometimes eats meat)

Bromance= bro (slang, from brother) + romance (4')

Frenemy= friend + enemy

Hangry= hungry + angry

Workaholic/Shopaholic= work/shop + alcoholic

Ginormous= giant + enormous

Fantabulous= fantastic + fabulous

Guesstimate= guess + estimate

Athleisure= athletic + leisure

Jeggings= jeans + leggings

It may seem that some of these words (fantabulous, guesstimate) might just be part of trends that will ultimately fade, but, surprisingly, most of the words on this list are being used more and more and the majority are already recognized by dictionaries.

One of the most interesting aspects of the English language, is how creative its speakers are in making up new words and, at the same time, how willing they are to embrace them. Sometimes these are portmanteaus and other times they are compound words. Regardless, these new words are similar in that, as soon as a cool, inventive one comes up, it starts being used till eventually it gets picked up by dictionaries and it becomes a staple in our vocabularies.

How about you? What are the words you were most surprised to see in our list and which are your favourite ones?