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portmanteau words

portmanteau words is the plural of portmanteau word.

Meaning of portmanteau word

Noun

portmanteau word (plural portmanteau words)

  1. A word which combines the meaning of two words (or, rarely, more than two words), formed by combining the words, usually, but not always, by adjoining the first part of one word and the last part of the other, the adjoining parts often having a common vowel.
    • Well, ‘slithy’ means ‘lithe and slimy.’ ‘Lithe’ is the same as ‘active.’ You see it’s like a portmanteau⸺there are two meanings packed up into one word.[1871 December 27 (indicated as 1872), Lewis Carroll [pseudonym; Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], “Humpty Dumpty”, in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, London: Macmillan and Co....

Questions about portmanteau words

What is portmanteau words the plural of?
Portmanteau words is the plural of portmanteau word.

Words near portmanteau words in the dictionary

  1. portmanteau
  2. portmanteau agreement
  3. portmanteau film
  4. portmanteau films
  5. portmanteau word
  6. portmanteau words
  7. portmanteaued
  8. portmanteauing
  9. portmanteaus
  10. portmanteaux
  11. portmantle

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: portmanteau words (page history and authors); portmanteau word (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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