ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY

5.6 Blend(ing)

 

Blending is a word-forming process where a new lexeme is produced by combining the shortened forms of two or more words in such a way that their constituent parts are identifiable. The meaning is also a blend of two or more components. For example, harmolodic is a combination of harmonic and melodic. Other blends are comsat (communications + satellite), simulcast (simultaneous + broadcast), slurb (slum + suburban), druther (would + rather), and others. Additionally, refudiate, (refute + repudiate) was recently added to the New Oxford American Dictionary (2010). Some of these blends are coined for an occasion, as a political event; for example, Watergate is a hotel/office complex where a political scandal occurred, and later similar words were coined to denote certain types of scandals, e.g., Koreagate, oilgate, and computergate. Some of these combining forms come out of activity; for example, - thon means any long and uninterrupted activity, and it came from marathon. Later, new words were coined, such as begathons, danceathons, telethons, walkathons, workathons, phoneathons, and others. The exercise vogue produced the following blends: dancercise (dance + exercise), jazzercise (jazz + exercise), aerobicise (aerobic + exercise), aquacise (aqua + exercise), and others. Some combining forms appear out of the fever of fashion, such as -oholic and -aholic (a person addicted to or obsessed with), which generate the blends workaholic, shopaholic, chocoholic, melancholic, bookaholic, danceaholic, textaholic, and others. Some blends will disappear from use. Blends tend to be more frequent in informal style; however, they may be used in advertising and technical fields as well.