A portmanteau blends two words into one, like breakfast and lunch becoming the single word brunch.

The longer version

Breakfast and lunch share no letters at all, so brunch simply clips the first and fuses it to the second, keeping the opening of one word and the tail of the other. Blends usually cut at a natural seam, which is why the result sounds like a single word rather than a stumble.

Smoke and fog gave smog, motor and hotel gave motel, and newer coinages follow the same shape. Blends differ from compounds, which keep both words whole, and from acronyms, which take initials. Some blends wear so well that speakers forget the source, and a few later get reanalysed, so the seam that once seemed obvious disappears from view.

Where this entry sits

This category gathers small surprises about the English language, from odd spelling rules to words that quietly hide their own history. Expect palindromes, punctuation oddities, borrowed terms, and the strange ways writing systems record spoken speech. The full list sits on the Words and Language page, where every entry is listed in order.