Movember

Difficulty:Level 5

As you'll learn from this short dictation, Movember is a combination of two words, mustache and November. Another name for a word formed from two different words is portmanteau.

portmanteau

pɔːtˈmantəʊ

Meanings

noun

• a large travelling bag, typically made of stiff leather and opening into two equal parts.
• a word blending the sounds and combining the meanings of two others, for example motel or brunch.
  E.g. podcast is a portmanteau, a made-up word coined from a combination of the words iPod and broadcast

As you can see, the literal meaning of portmanteau, a word borrowed from French, is a large travelling bag. The application of it to words formed from two words possibly comes from the story of Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll.

In that book, one character says "You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word". So now you know why the English use a French word for a travelling bag as the name of a word combining two other words.

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• Fresher mode

  

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