Portmanteaus

When Alice went Through the Looking Glass she came across a strange poem called Jabberwocky, which was full of unfamiliar words. So when she met egg-head Humpty Dumpty, she asked him what some of them meant. "Slithy", for example. He replied:

Well, "SLITHY" means "lithe and slimy." "Lithe" is the same as "active." You see it's like a portmanteau – there are two meanings packed up into one word.'

These days, we reserve "portmanteau" for two-in-one words – its "suitcase" meaning is no more.

Sometimes portmanteaus just arise spontaneously:

impestuous (tempestuous, impetuous)
inferior decoration (inferior, interior)
sperratic (sporadic and erratic)
caterpaulted (caterpulted and vaulted)
climp (clamp and cling with a suggestion of limpet)

intertwingle (twine and mingle)

Sometimes they incorporate names:

parentokil (to be applied to love rats – yahoo news)
unitard
Camillagate
Frankenfoods
Bollywood
monokini
tankini

Slockney (Sloane plus Cockney)

Time-style coinages are more deliberate:

actorvist
affluencersbistronomique
brandlord
celebrinerd
clipumentary
democratators (for elected dictators)
eduvangelical (Ben Goldacre’s blog)
Eurocrat
fakeumentary
fauxstalgia (nostalgia for somewhere you’ve never been, a time when you weren’t alive)

gargantoplex (Roger Ebert)
giganchises

henchgoon
insinuendo

instapundit

locavore

malvertising

mathlete
nonebrity
paydar (sense of who can afford it/who has paid what when)
proglodytes (prog rock fans)
racevestite (Is it because I is black?)
sheeple (Andy Giddings)
skipverts
taxiles

tentalow (tent and bungalow)

voluntourism
wreckovations
youthquake