Portmantrolled

Roy Blount Jr.'s Alphabet Juice is sort of a dictionary of words that tickle Roy Blount Jr., most of which tickle me too. Sadly I couldn't finish it because it fell behind the toilet, and, you know, once a book gets back there, it can never stop being the book that fell behind the toilet, if you know what I mean. But I digress... two sentences in, which has to be a new record.

Anyway, I'm reading the book, before the Incident, and there's a bunch of entries for random words from Urbandictionary.com. And I'm all "I want to do that," but it just felt like cheating. So here's me cheating.

A portmanteau is one word made out of two or more words smooshed together. Lewis Carrol invented a bunch of them, a couple of which, like chortle, made it into the language proper. Other common portmanteaus include gerrymander, cyborg, and smog. 

Pop culture these days has raised the portmanteau from obscurity and I dig it. So here's a couple of my faves:

Ginormous: Giant and enormous. This one was recently added to Webster's, much to the chagrin of word purists who are somehow not aware that new words aren't a threat to the foundations of our civilization. I use this a lot.

Blog: What this is.

Pornado: A porn tornado, or the thing that happens when you click what seems like a perfectly legitimate link, and suddenly your screen explodes into a whirlwind of pornographic popups. Less common since the advent of popup blocker.

Nonversation: Totally meaningless and unproductive conversation.

Rickroll: This. Related things include Trololoroll, Duckroll (which predates rickrolling, actually), and my new favorite, multiroll.

Bromance: A close, affectionate relationship between two straight dudes. 

And there you have it. A bunch of crap I took from Urbandictionary.com and regurgitated to you.