Prefatory Note. The following pages grew, by gradual accretion, out of some chance notations of blends made from time to time by the author, or brought to her attention by others. The form into which the discussion shaped itself is due to the manner of its genesis, rather than to preliminary plan, or to any original intention on the part of the author to treat the subject. Of chief interest, probably, is the section dealing with the present-day vogue of blend formations. It seems time that specific attention be called to the contemporary popularity of blends, and to the freedom felt in their coinage, not only in the factitious creations of the lettered class, and in folk-forms, but in scientific nomenclature, in trade terms, and in arbi- trarily made baptismal names and place-names. Since treatment is limited to English blends, no effort was made, where bibliographical citations are given, to include references to blends in other languages. Contents. I. General Nature and Interest of Blend-Words 1 II. Relation to Standard or Literary Speech III. Some Delimitations . . 6 IV. Present-Day Vogue V. General Classes of Blends VI. Illustrative Lists of English Blends of Blend Formations 12 3 19 25 I. General Nature and Interest of Blend-Words. Blend-words, amalgams, or fusions, may be defined as two or more words, often of cognate sense, telescoped as it were into one as factitious conflations which retain, for a while at least, the suggestive power of their various elements. Probably they are best known to the general public, not through discussion by professional linguists, but through the portmanteau words, i. e., words into which two meanings are packed as in a portmanteau, of a passage in Lewis Carrolls Through the Looking Glass... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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