Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Words that aren't words but are really two or more words strung together

In doing research on my upcoming honeymoon, which will be a lovely cruise to Alaska, I came across a booklet of "shore excursions" that are offered by the cruise company. Among these excursions are "flightseeing" adventures. These are not your regular, run-of-the-mill sightseeing trips. Your trip includes transportation via plane and/or helicopter. See the brilliance of it? Sightseeing + flying = Flightseeing!
This whole thing got me thinking about words that are not real words but... well, you can get it from the title. While the word "flightseeing" is very annoying, there are others that I find wonderful:

craptastic
asstastic
fugly
beefalo
mockumentary
Japanimation
Sorostitute (that's a Sorority girl who looks and acts like a prostitute)
fucktard



There is, of course, the rash of celebrity couples that have been combined into odd and (sometimes annoying) names:

Brangelina
Bennifer
TomKat


In my search to find a long list of these hybrid words (also called portmanteau) I stumbled across these gems:

molestache (a guy with facial hair that makes him look like a child molester)
manscaping (which, presumably, a guy will do if he is a metrosexual)
threequel (a sequel to a sequel)



There are many, many more (as you can imagine). To check out a few lists of portmanteau words, click here.
Also, feel free to submit your favorites in the comments section below.

1 Comments:

Blogger David said...

I've always loved "craptastic." And while extremely uncommon, I long for the day when I can drop Hitleriffic into a conversation.

Incidentally, when I was in Hawaii several years ago, I "flightsaw" the Weimeia Valley (on Kauai, site of some scenery from Jurassic Park) by helicopter. I didn't think of it as "flightseeing" at the time.

3:58 PM  

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