4 
, Indefinite Composites and Word-Coinage 5 
which the zealous have vainly sought foreign originals or cognates. 
There might be doubt as regards which words so arose; a fixed 
list of “indefinite composites” might not be possible; but there 
can hardly be doubt of the existence of the method itself. 
Distinctive of this variety of blends, if they may be called such, 
is the fact that they so often suggest or involve onomatopoeia, as 
the words cited have shown; also the fact that they are not felt as 
specific composites, as are recognized fusion forms; e. g., promp- 
tual, fidgitated, insinuendo, sneakret, the universanimous of Low- 
ell’s Biglow Papers, or Wallace Irwin’s kissletoe-vine and night- 
inglory bird.© There is always the sense of intrinsic fitness for 
the idea expressed, but not a sense of definite elements in amal- 
gam. However, the line between blends proper and conjectural or 
indefinite blends is sometimes hard to draw. The now well-estab- 
lished though lately formed squawk may be a welding of squeak 
and squall, but squeal, shrick, hawk, etc., may have haunted the 
mind also in its creation. Scurry, of doubtful etymology, may be 
a “portmanteau form” from scour, older skirr, and hurry; but, 
were it a recent instead of an older word, one would be tempted 
to think that scud, scoot, etc., might have played some part in its 
formation. Into splurge, for which no etymology has been pro- 
posed, might enter the elements of splash, with its variants splat- 
ter, splutter, and large. Flaunt has been thought to blend the ele- 
ments of fly, flout, vaunt,’ etc. The myowl, used by Kipling and 
others, may combine meow and yowl, but it involves also the sug- 
those suggested were snumble, to signify a child’s effort to express the 
sensation felt in the nostrils when one drinks an effervescing mineral 
water, screel, the sensation produced by hearing a knife-edge squeal on a 
slate, scrungle, the noise made by a slate pencil squeaked on a slate, twink, 
a testy person full of kinks and cranks, and several similar formations . 
obviously having their origin in a sort of reminiscent amalgamation. 
“Echoic composites” might be a better name than “indefinite com- 
posites” for the type of blends treated in this paper, were it not for the 
fact that “echoic” is usually employed by philologists not in its primary 
meaning—that which it would have here—but in the meaning of onamato- 
poetic, given it by Dr. Murray, Mr. Bradley and others. 
6“Tetters of a Japanese Schoolboy,” in Colliers Weekly, vi, viii, xix, 
Vols. 41, 42. 
7 New English Dictionary. 
au 
