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Assuming "phreak" is a portmanteau of "phone" and "freak," giving us the term "phreaking" to describe the illicit act of hacking telephone networks, and "Phishing" pays homage to it by misspelling "fishing" to describe the practice of tricking someone into revealing sensitive information on computer networks, now we have "Vishing" (voice call phishing), "Smishing" (SMS text message phishing), and "Qishing" (QR code phishing) being used in the security industry.

Is there a better term (besides "annoying") than "jargon" to describe these words?

Edwin Ashworth
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koffkah
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1 Answers1

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Blends combine lexemes to form a new word.

For example:

  • Chindia is a blend of China and India,
  • Obamacon a blend of Obama and conservative,
  • celeblog a blend of celebrity and blog,
  • groceraunt a blend of grocer and restaurant,
  • vegelate a blend of vegetable and chocolate,

Such compound neologisms are often buzzwords.

Graffito
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    Is there a difference between blend and portmanteau? – Barmar Oct 03 '23 at 20:43
  • @Barmar : 'Portmanteau' vs. 'Blend' They're both about smashing words together to make new ones. "Blends", as they're called, are produced by combining other words or parts of words, like brunch from breakfast and lunch. Hold on, some of you are saying, don't you mean "portmanteau"? Well, yes. Portmanteau works too, but it's not the term that's been typically employed by lexicographers and linguists. – Graffito Oct 03 '23 at 21:14