Motel, brunch, and sitcom are all fairly obvious portmanteaux, words “formed by blending sounds from two or more distinct words and combining their meaning,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. (They were made by combining motor and hotel, breakfast and lunch, and situation and comedy, respectively.) The portmanteaux on this list, however, are slightly more undercover.
Chortle
Apart from giving us the word portmanteau to describe these things, you can also thank Lewis Carroll for chortle, which might be a combination of snort and chuckle. It was first used in 1871’s Through the Looking-Glass—and according to the OED, it’s not related to churtle, meaning “to chirp.” Other portmanteaux Carroll used in Through the Looking-Glass are slithy (lithe and slimy) and mimsy (flimsy and miserable).
Bodacious
Bodacious can be traced back to the bold and audacious 1840s—at that point, it meant “complete, thorough, arrant,” according to the OED. The sense meaning “excellent, fabulous, great” dates to the 1970s, though most probably associate it with ’80s slang.
Velcro
The most famous type of hook and loop fastener, Velcro (which is a registered trademark) is a combination of velours and croché. Literally, “hooked velvet.”
Meld
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, meld—meaning “To merge, blend; to combine or incorporate”—likely came from a combination of melt and weld in the 1930s. Vulcan mind-melding came along some 30 years later.
Bit
Put this in your hard drive. The concept of the bit, as in a binary digit, has been around since the late 1940s.
Pixel
Pixel—meaning “Each of the minute areas of uniform illumination of which the image on a television, computer screen, etc., is composed”—which combined pix, meaning “pictures,” and el- as in element. The OED’s first citation is a 1969 issue of The Proceedings of Society Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers: “We have chosen to sample at a 500 KC rate and we define each one of these samples as a picture element or a pixel. We have sampled each pixel with 6-bit accuracy.”
Sony
Sometimes company names are portmanteaux. While some, like Groupon, are obvious (it’s a combination of group and coupon), Sony is a combination of the Latin sonus, meaning “sonic,” and sonny, or “little son.” According to Sony’s website, “Sony is supposed to represent a very small group of young people who have the energy and passion towards unlimited creations and innovative ideas. … Easy to pronounce and read in any language, the name Sony, which has a lively ring to it, fits comfortably with the spirit of freedom and open-mindedness.”
Endorphin
The term endorphin was created from the French endogène and morphine in the 1970s to describe those opiate-like peptides that kick in just when you’re about to give up jogging altogether.
Vitamin
Polish biochemist Casimir Funk combined the Latin word for life, vita, and amine to coin vitamine in 1912. When it became apparent that these substances weren’t actually amines, the e came off (that happened around 1920).
Tanzania
Sometimes a portmanteau is a place you can go. The east African states Tanganyika and Zanzibar became Tanzania in 1964.
Smog
This word for air pollution that obscures your view of cities like Los Angeles was created in the early 1900s by combining the words smoke and fog.
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A version of this story ran in 2015; it has been updated for 2024.