7 Secret Portmanteaus That Have Been Hiding in Plain Sight

Some perfectly normal-seeming words that are actually two other words standing on top of each other in a trench coat.

Because there is no justice in the world, “portmanteau” does not quite qualify as a portmanteau (it’s just a garden variety compound), even though it is made up of two words. Borrowed into English in the mid-1500s, it was formed from the French words porte (carry) and manteau (cloak), and it did what it said on the tin, which is to say that it was a word for a bag that carried a cloak. By the 1850s, it had come to mean, more specifically, a suitcase with a hinge at the back to open into two equal halves, which is what Lewis Carroll was thinking about when he appropriated it for Humpty Dumpty to describe one word made from smushing together two others in Through the Looking Glass.

“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.”

Portmanteaus (or portmanteaux, if you’re feeling ever so saucy, or “blend words,” if you’re decidedly not) are good clean fun — who doesn’t enjoy bromance, brunch, sexting, and alcopops (maybe not all at once)? But the most successful ones have been hiding among us for so…