A portmanteau word is a new word made by blending parts of two other words so that both sound and meaning are partly kept. Poets use portmanteau words to create playful, compressed, or dreamlike language, especially when ordinary vocabulary does not quite fit the feeling they want. Lewis Carroll's slithy, from lithe and slimy, is a well-known example.
Example
The dusk was a moonglow hush,
a bluebird night of silvered sleep.
Related Definitions
[n] a word formed by joining two others (e.g., `smog' is a blend of `smoke' and `fog')
Related Terms
ambiguity, amphibology, blend, contamination, counterword, double entendre, equivocal, equivocality, equivocation, equivoque, hybrid, hybrid word, hybridism, macaronic, macaronicism, polysemant, portmanteau, portmantologism, pun, squinting construction, t