A portmanteau, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a new word that is obtained by smashing two familiar words together so that their meanings get combined. Many portmanteaus have now passed into regular usage and we no longer think of them as such. Examples are spork (spoon+fork), brunch (breakfast+lunch), motel (motor+hotel), malware (malicious+software), and frenemy (friend+enemy). For more examples, see here.

‘Portmanteau’ (meaning a large suitcase that opens up into two halves) is itself a portmanteau made up of two French words ‘porter’ (to carry) and ‘manteau’ (a cloak).

Some portmanteaus have an ephemeral existence because their lifetimes are clearly limited. Examples are Brangelina and Bennifer that have been coined for celebrity couples.

Journalists tend to try to insert portmanteaus into usage to liven their reporting and they sometimes seem forced because the combined meaning is not obvious. For example, I recently heard on the news someone using the word ‘vibecession‘. This is a portmanteau of the words ‘vibes’ and ‘recession’ and “refers to a disconnect between the economy of a country and the general public’s negative perception of it, which is mostly pessimistic.”

I find other portmanteaus to be too cute or ugly or unnecessary. Examples are ‘snowmageddon’ (snow+Armageddon to denote a massive snowstorm), ‘staycation’ (stay+vacation to denote spending your vacation at home), and the one I hate the most ‘bleisure’ (business+leisure to denote travel that is done for both business and leisure)

Language is dynamic and grows with the addition of new words and giving new meaning to old ones. The staying power of any new word or phrase is determined by how many people find it appealing and start using it. No single person’s opinions matter but there are some portmanteaus that I find grating and hope will disappear.

In her review of a book by Tommy Tomlinson titled Dogland: Passion, Glory, Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show, Kathryn Schulz begins with this story.

Bernard de Menthon was born around the year 1000, near what is now the border of Switzerland and France. He was raised in a castle, given a first-class education, and, in time, affianced by his father to a noblewoman, as befit the scion of an ancient and wealthy family. By then, however, de Menthon had grown into a pious young man whose plans for the future did not include marriage. According to legend, the night before the wedding, he fled the castle by jumping out of a high window, whereupon a band of angels caught him and lowered him gently to the ground.
Ordained as a priest, de Menthon began preaching in villages throughout the region of Aosta, a territory that included a mountain pass already in use for at least a thousand years to cross the Western Alps. In de Menthon’s day, it was a popular route for Christians making the pilgrimage to Rome, but the journey was perilous. Bands of brigands routinely staked out the area to attack travellers, the pass itself was harrowing—eight thousand feet high, buried in snow, prone to avalanches—and de Menthon often found himself ministering to travellers who had been subjected to its terrors. And so, when he became the archdeacon of Aosta, he established a hospice in the pass, staffed by monks who offered aid to pilgrims venturing over the mountains.
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At the recently held Westminster Dog Show, a small mixed breed dog named Nimble turned in an amazing performance in the agility event.

Stephen Colbert showed the clip on his show and said that the reason the dog ran so fast was that he saw that Kristi Noem was one of the judges.

I stopped listening to popular music around the mid-1970s or so. While the 60s and early 70s had some great music, it was also a time when some very silly songs managed to get air time on the radio. Recently, while cooking, the chorus of one such old song popped into my mind and I started singing it. My daughter and son-in-law who were present were incredulous that such a song could possibly have been made let alone become somewhat popular and accused me of making it up on the spur of the moment. So I gave them proof.

Here it is.

I having been having a wonderful time these last few days entertaining family and friends and so did not have time to blog.

Will be back soon.

We are most familiar with the form of the so-called Golden Rule that says that one should treat others as you would like others to treat you. That seems reasonable on the surface but it has the problem that how you would like to be treated may not be how someone else would like to be treated. Some time ago, I argued for a better form of the Golden Rule that says simply “Don’t be a jerk” because the standard form was too vague and too subject to idiosyncratic interpretations to be useful.

My formulation was not very elegant but it turns out that there is a better way of expressing the same sentiment that has been around for millennia. It also takes a negative form of the rule and says that one should not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated. This seems better because avoiding doing things to others that one would not like have done to you avoids many pitfalls, since it is not requiring you to do something to others.
[Read more…]

This network of blogs does not have paywalls and does not have annoying advertisements. The bloggers do not get paid, doing what they do just for the love of it. We also do not have a technical support staff. But running an online site, however lean it is, does have unavoidable costs, such as paying for servers and the like. So where does the money come from to pay for such things?

Basically, PZ Myers over at Pharyngula, one of the founders of the network, does it as a labor of love. He does have a Patreon account and the money that people donate to that account helps to defray the costs.

So if you can afford to give something however small, please go to that Patreon site and make a contribution.

Thanks!