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n. pl. port·man·teaus or port·man·teaux (-tōz, -tōz) 1. A large leather suitcase that opens into two hinged compartments. 2. a. A word formed by merging the sounds and meanings of two different words, as chortle, from chuckle and snort. Also called portmanteau word. b. A word or part of a word that is analyzable as consisting of more than one morpheme without a clear boundary between them, as French du "of the" from de "of" and le "the." Also called portmanteau morph. adj. General or generalized: a portmanteau description; portmanteau terms. [French portemanteau : porte-, from porter, to carry (from Old French; see PORT5) + manteau, cloak (from Old French mantel, from Latin mantellum). N., senses 2a and b, in reference to Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, in which Humpty Dumpty explains slithy and other made-up words in the poem "Jabberwocky" to Alice as follows: "Slithy" means "lithe and slimy" ... You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.] |
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