Margaret M. Bryant

Blends Are Increasing

IN THIS ERA of word creation, greater than ever before because of the many new inventions, discoveries, and developments in all fields, we find that blends are on the increase. New situations, new objects, new processes, new experiences of all types demand new words. Before the middle of the nineteenth century this type of word formation was somewhat rare. The usual citations one finds are Edmund Spensers wrizzled (probably wrinkled + frizzled), Shakespeares glaze (glare + gaze), and Lewis Carrolls slithy (slimy + lithe), chortle (chuckle + snort), snark (snake + shark), and galumph (gallop + triumph). These telescoped words, especially the humorous creations, were formerly referred to as portmanteau words because of Lewis Carrolls explanation in Through the Looking-Glass that they were formed by fitting two words into one, as clothes are fitted into a portmanteau or traveling bag. Linguists, however, more often refer to these words as blends. This process is in frequent use today, especially by magazine and newspaper writers and in forming trade names, as evidenced in the list below.1 Blends occur in many fields; those reported here are distributed among the following fields (with the number in each field in parentheses): fashion (60); sports, travel, and entertainment (54); science and technology (44); air and space (5); home (37); political issues (15); education (3); art (7); high fidelity (13); youth (8); drug addiction (2); sex (7); health (5); miscellaneous (45). One of the great producers of blends is Time magazine. From this list of 306, 47 are from Time. These coinages often blend the first sounds of one word with the last sounds of another if some element of sound is common to both, as in the case of bullionaire (bullion + billionaire) or rat-a-tattoo (rat-a-tat + tattoo). In some cases a complete word is incorporated in the new creation, as in ambisextrous (sex + ambidextrous), soundsational (sound + sensational), rendezwoo (rendezvous + woo). A combining form is sometimes used instead of a word, as in celebriana (celebrity + -ana) and Thermotainer (thermo+ retainer). At times the first syllable or middle syllable of a word is employed, as illustrated by

Space Exploration Terms

O UR SOURCES OF NEW WORDS are as varied as the people who inhabit our planet. A major wellspring for the growth of the English language is the realm of science-particularly space science. Like every new endeavor in mans history, space exploration has brought with it a new vocabulary which is being used by specialists and amateurs alike. The science fiction of the past has become the science history of today. Terms have been formed in various ways. Of the terms collected chiefly during 1965 and 1966 from newspapers, magazines, both scientific and nonscientific, publications that deal with aeronautics and those that do not, and from an occasional book, the largest number is made up of compounds, such as moonship, spaceport, spacewalk, lunar orbiter, and soarplane. Of 103 compounds 79 were nouns, as twin flight and launch pad; 23 were adjectives, illustrated by moonbound and earth-orbiting; and 3 were verbs, seen in soft-land and splash-land. The next largest group of terms consists of acronyms, such as IVMP (interplanetary monitoring platform), MOL (manned orbiting laboratory), and OAO (orbiting astronomical observatory). They are 37 in number. The third largest group (28) is that formed by affixes, 23 by means of prefixes as astromedicine and paradiver and 5 by means of suffixes, illustrated in capsuleful and spacemanship. Seven of the terms are blends, seen in Apollonaut (Apollo + astronaut) and earthscape (earth + landscape). Functional shift produced 4, shown in go as a noun and layer cake as an adjective. Some terms, 6 in number, have taken their names from people, either real or fictitious, and a bird: coriolis effect, Gulliver, and kiwi. Metaphor added 1 word: 8-ball; slang contributed drop dead as an adjective and glitches, a noun; and clipping accounted for nuke, from nuclear. Another group of 24 terms shows shifts in association of meaning. There has been an extension of meaning to the space world, as seen in capsule for any spacecraft or in the names of the unmanned space probes of Mars, Venus, and the moon by our Surveyors and Voyagers. These are only some of the terms that we now encounter as we read our newspapers and magazines or listen to the radio or television. Daily others are being added. This selected list follows.

Proverbs and How to Collect Them

During recent years the American Dialect Society has been sponsoring the collection and organization of proverbial material, a work being carried out by a committee, of which the present writer is chairman. The purpose of this paper is to encourage and assist the efforts of those who would like to collect proverbs, but who may feel that they have too little information about proverbs themselves, as well as about the best ways of collecting them. The paper is divided into two parts, the first of which deals with the theoretical and historical aspects of the study of proverbs, and the second with the practical problems of collection.

Names and Terms Used in the Fashion World

The many types of textiles alone available on the market overwhelm the modern-day shopper. Names like Dacron, Orlon, Lastex, Spandex, and Dynel, virtually unknown ten or fifteen years ago, are heard constantly today as a result of an enormous amount of research and development on the part of many chemical companies that are vying with one another to develop fabrics with qualities better than cotton and wool. This experimentation has put todays shopper in a position to choose the particular quality or combination of qualities he or she desires in a fabric-drip-dry, crease-resistant, or nonshrinking. The following names and terms pertaining to the fashion world, none of which appears in recent dictionaries, have been gathered from magazines, newspapers, and occasional advertising material. It seems fairly obvious that many of these terms are trademarks, and those which are known to be are so designated. The fact that a term is not marked does not mean, however, that it is not a trademark, merely that trademark status could not be validated. For help in identifying many of these terms as trademarks, grateful acknowledgment is made to Dorothy Fey of the United States Trademark Association, New York City. The inclusion of an item in this list does not express the authors opinion concerning proprietary rights. Nor is a definition in this list to be considered as affecting any trademarks validity. Among the methods of creation, the process of simple juxtaposition, that is, compounding, accounts for the formation of more names and terms in the world of fashion than does any other. In the following list of 371, 134 (36.1