IV.—ON INDEFINITE COMPOSITES AND 
WORD-COINAGE. 
BY LOUISE POUND 
Recognition of “blending” as a mode of word-formation, the 
telescoping of two or more words into one, as it were, or the 
superposition of one word upon another, is not new among ety- 
mologists, although the subject has never been given separate or 
very elaborate treatment. Some instances of these factitious 
amalgam forms, the “portmanteau words” of Lewis Carroll’s 
Through the Looking Glass, the blend or fusion forms of etymolo- 
gists or lexicographers, are dumbfound from dumb and confound, 
dang from damn and hang, gerrymander from Elbridge Gerry and 
salamander, electrocute from electric and execute; probably boost 
from boom and hoist, lunch from lump and hunch, luncheon from 
lunch and the now obsolete nuncheon, scurry from skirr or scour 
and hurry, squirm from squir and swarm, also numerous mongrel 
slang or dialect forms, often jocular in intention, like the Amer- 
ican slantendicular, solemncholy, happenstance, grandificient, 
sweatspiration, or the English dialectal rasparated, boldacious, bold- 
rumptious. Blend forms have been noted for French, German, 
and other European languages, and probably have an antiquity 
which it would be futile to try to trace. Wiclif and other writers, 
from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, use austern, a com- 
posite of austere and stern; Shakespeare uses bubukle from bubo 
and carbuncle, and porpentine, which may be a crossing of porcy- 
pine and porpoint; and undoubtedly many such forms have won 
acceptance, from time to time, in the history of the language; 
although, in most cases, they would be difficult to solve, after use 
long enough for the striking or whimsical quality which gave them 
vogue to become dimmed. 
Nevertheless it is safe to affirm that factitious blends are being 
made with the greatest frequency, and have their widest diffusion, 
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