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Manwich and Beefaroni as portmanteaus
My “Grocery store semiotics” posting looked briefly at two canned-food preparations: Manwich and Beefaroni. Manwich: “a canned sloppy joe sauce … The can contains seasoned tomato sauce that is added to...
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-licious sex
It began with the porn flick Twinkalicious (a 5-hour compilation of scenes featuring twink sex, that is, sex between twinks). The front cover of the DVD (showing a twink sucking cock) and the back...
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More dubious portmanteaus
For the Fourth of July (Independence Day) weekend, an advertising campaign on the TLA Adult Gay Video site: Celebrate Foreskindependence (intended: foreskin + independence). Meanwhile, for some time...
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bat-, -mobile, and -man
It started with the Batmobile, Batman’s astounding car (which first appeared in 1966). Batmobile looks like a portmanteau of Batman and automobile, but both parts are more complex than that. A...
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Odds and ends 8/16/13
Some more short takes, on a notable person, avoidance of non-taboo words, wordless instructions, typefaces, and a libfix. 1. John Lewis. In the NYT on the 14th, a substantial piece by Sheryl Gay...
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Sexual -zillas
Scrolled past in the avalanche of spam this morning, a penis enlargement ad that promised to give me Cockzilla. Surprisingly, I hadn’t noticed this use of the libfix -zilla (from Godzilla) before — but...
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Two from The Week
Two recent items from the magazine The Week: Neal Whitman on libfixes, James Harbeck on apostrophes. Both with humor. From Neal on the 17th, “A linguistic tour of the best libfixes, from -ana to -zilla...
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Yet another -kini
From Karen Chung on Facebook, this story from 8/21/12 (note the date), “The Latest Chinese Beach Craze – Face-kini”: A new kind of swimwear trend is sweeping the Chinese beaches in Qingdao in eastern...
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Animal -zilla
A story that combines libfixes, extraordinary animals, and science reporting. From Stan Carey yesterday, a pointer to this BBC News science story, “ ’Platypus-zilla’ fossil unearthed in Australia” by...
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Thanksgiving news
Two items for (U.S.) Thanksgiving: once more on Thanksgivuk(k)ah, and the entertaining tryptophantastic. 1. Thanksgivuk(k)ah again. The rare confluence of (U.S.) Thanksgiving and Hanukkah has been all...
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Brief morphological notes
Three recent items: robophobic, fungineering, fracktacular. Three sightinga, among many for each of these. robophobic. From Maureen Dowd in the NYT, “Mommy, the Drone’s Here”, 12/4/13: Law enforcement...
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-gate news
The libfix -gate seems to be irresistible, trotted out for all sorts of public fusses; discussion here. Recent example, reported by Victor Steinbok on ADS-L: According to MediaBistro, there’s now yet...
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Aquapocalypse
In the news recently, stories about the chemical spill in West Virginia, now widely labeled the Aquapocalpse — with the libfix -pocalypse used in denoting a disaster, but not (as you might at first...
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Commercial playful morphology
In television commercials that recently came past me: yummify (and more) in a 5-hour ENERGY commercial; and waffulicious in an IHOP commercial. yummify etc. On this site, a commercial exhorting us to...
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Once -tastic, now -astic
A recent ad for Daedalus books, spotted in the latest issue of Harper’s magazine, and no doubt in other bookish publications: The libfix -tastic, extracted from fantastic, has here been whittled down a...
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Annals of (possible) libfixes: -abelia
In the April 20th New Yorker, a fascinating story of a lost, and eventually found, Tlingit totem pole, in the Our Far-Flung Correspondents category: “The Tallest Trophy: A movie star made off with an...
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From disaster to great spectacle
The news for yesterday, from Inside Edition: Saturday is scheduled to be the biggest day ever in sports history with “The Fight of the Century,” [Floyd Mayweather, Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao] Kentucky...
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A panderthon
The cover of the June 2015 Funny Times, by Matt Wuerker: What caught my eye was panderthon, (roughly) ‘an interminable occasion of pandering’, with the libfix -(a)thon. The word is especially...
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-(a)ganza
Five years ago I took note of the Teapartyganza segments on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show in 2010 (there’s a set of videos of the shows here). At the time, I took the name to be a one-off playful...
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-valanche
And the libfixes pour in. From Joel Berson on ADS-L yesterday, a report of ashvalanche ‘avalanche of ash’ (for two types of ash, with avalanche understood metaphorically). And that leads to plenty more...
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