Understanding Athelind's Argot: "Portmantypeau"

[athelind]

When you're thinking if two words of similar meaning, and wind up typing something that's a blend of both.

Example: When "slimmer" and "trimmer" combine to become "stimmer".

(see Portmanteau.)

(Technically, this doesn't count as an "Argot" post, as it's something I just coined and decided to preserve. But close enough.)

Comments

[rikoshi.livejournal.com]

This?

Wins.

[ounceofreason.livejournal.com]

I like it better when the words don't have anything in common, and you get something cool like "Moonana" (Moon-banana, which annoys my nephew for some reason and is therefore funny) or "Guitarvest" (Guitar-harvest, which came up during a college production of "The Tender Land."

[shdragon.livejournal.com]

Ok. I've had this entry at the top of my friend's list for a few hours now as I have this window open in the background, and I wondered and wondered how you came up with that word. I just now discovered...

'typeau' == 'typo'..

d'oh.

(and I do the same thing fairly regularly myself, though I do it verbally... What's the verbal equivalent to a typo?)

[jdarkwulf.livejournal.com]

You know, some buddies and I (who are all geeks) were kind of bored, and got to thinking about this.

If you miskey, it's a typographical error, a "typo".

If you miswrite, that would be a graphological error, hence a "grapho".

Hmmm. Misspeaking. Linguistic error. "Lingui"? :)