Re:How French Was Medieval England?
by gumby on Friday January 26, 2024 @04:59PM
(#39149176)
French does that too so I think an invasion would not have helped.
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in English, we refer to smashed-together word(s) as "portmanteau", a French word that is a portmanteau itself
Re:How French Was Medieval England?
by NoZebra120vClip on Friday January 26, 2024 @11:56PM
(#39152722)
The sort of compound words which we're discussing appear by a process of synthesis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_language
See also: agglutination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutination
A portmanteau is different, where parts of several words are blended, rather than retaining the substance of each word in a compound.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blend_word
And let's not forget xkcd's coinage of the malamanteau: