‘Portmanteau words’ are a set of words that I previously didn’t know existed. Of course I had heard of some of the English words that were classed at ‘Portmanteau words’ however, I didn’t know that they had their own grouping in the English Language! ‘Portmanteau words’ are words that have been created by two meanings/ different words being pushed together to created one new word. This idea was created by Victorian author Lewis Carroll, where he first coined the idea in the book; Alice Through the Looking Glass in 1872. In society today, we all use many of these ‘Portmanteau words’ on an everyday basis, probably without realising. For example, brunch- breakfast + lunch, cyborg- cybernetic + organism, guesstimate- guess + estimate, motel- motor + hotel, sitcom- situation + comedy as well as the word smog- smoke + fog. Researching these ‘Portmanteau words’ has got me thinking about who must have created these words. Was it one person, a group of people, or was it simply spread through word and mouth. This has given me the idea, to somehow research how these words came into existence and replicate that with my own actions. I could create my own ‘Portmanteau words’, and for a week or so use these words in my everyday language, as well as texts and see if anyone picks up on the words I have been using. This could highlight the way we understand words as humans and how intelligent we really are.

I also looked into what acronyms are. It has been a very long time since I did English Lessons so I had to refresh my memory on the technical terms of what these words mean. So, an acronym has two slightly different features associated with it. An acronym can be a word whose letters are the first letter of other words. For example, the word radar is made of the words ‘radio detection and ranging’ and ‘sound navigation and ranging.’ There are also words called short acronyms that have made their way into the English Language. A short acronym is a set of letters/ word that have been created to be a shorter version of the original meaning. For example, the word AIDS  means ‘Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome’, however the word AIDS has become more recognisable and widely used than its true meaning. Another word that is similar to the features of AIDS is the word VIP which obviously means ‘very important person’. This idea of shortening long words and phrases to an acronym is very clever and similarly to the ‘Portmanteau words’, are used in everyday life. So, what if I was again, to create my own set of acronyms and see how people responded to the words. Would their responses be what I was expecting?