A History of English Language

A history of the english language 288
Words such as electrocute or travelogue are often called portmanteau words, or better,
blends. 2 In them two words are, as it were, telescoped into one. This was a favorite
pastime of the author of Alice in Wonderland, and to him we owe the words chortle, a
blending of snort and chuckle, and snark (snake+shark). Similarly, the tunnel beneath the
English Channel is called the Chunnel. Often such coinages are formed with a playful or
humorous intent. The OED records brunch in the year 1900. Although it was originally
used facetiously in speaking of those who get up too late for breakfast and therefore
combine breakfast and lunch, it is now as likely to be used for the name of a social
occasion. Paradoxology, alcoholiday, revusical, yellocution, guestimate, condomania,
ecopolypse, and the like, often reveal flashes of wit. They carry a momentary appeal, like
the coinages of Time magazine (cinemactress, cinemaddict, cinemagnate), but only a few
of them—socialite for one—are likely to find a permanent place in the language. Like
epigrams they lose their luster when passed about at second hand.
221. Common Words from Proper Names.
Another source from which many English words have been derived in the past is the
names of persons and places. For example, sandwich owes its use to the fact that the earl
of Sandwich on one occasion put slices of meat between pieces of bread. Like other
processes of English word derivation this can be well illustrated in the nineteenth century
and later. Thus we get the word for tabasco sauce from the name of the Tabasco River in
Mexico. Camembert comes from the village in France from which cheese of this type
was originally exported. A limousine is so called from the name of a province in France,
and during the 1920s the American city Charleston gave its name to a dance. The word
colt for a certain kind of firearm is merely the name of the inventor. Wistaria, the vine
whose most common variety is now known as wisteria, is named after Caspar Wistar, an
American anatomist of the mid-1800s. In 1880 Captain Boycott, the agent of an Irish
landowner, refused to accept rents at the figure set by the tenants. His life was threatened,
his servants were forced to leave, and his figure was burnt in effigy. Hence from Ireland
came the use of the verb to boycott, meaning to coerce a person by refusing to have, and
preventing others from having, dealings with him. Similarly, lynch law owes its origin to
Captain William Lynch of Virginia, about 1776, and in the early nineteenth century we
find the verb to lynch. Shrapnel is from the name of the British general who invented the
type of missile. More than 500 common words in English have been traced to proper
names, and they must be con-
2
See Louise Pound, Blends: Their Relation to English Word Formation (Heidelberg, 1914) and
Garland Cannon, “Blends in English Word Formation,” Linguistics, 24 (1986), 725–53.