‘Blended’ Cyber-Neologisms
A M A N D A RO I G - M A R Í N
New words show how our world is changing
Technologies are beginning to blend our experience
of digital and physical realities. We exchange data
(images, videos, messages, etc.), present ourselves
to the rest of the world on social media, network,
and even perform a larger number of tasks than in
person. As our world and ways of life keep on changing, so do words. The aim of this article is to examine the coinage of blends (i.e. smog-type [<smoke +
fog] words) as a response to the blended realities that
have emerged from the use of new technologies.
Blended e-realities, blended words
The coinage of neologisms is, by no means, a new
phenomenon in the history of the English language. Novel words demonstrate the productivity
of any language while at the same time serve to attest to new realities and societal changes. Over the
last decades, however, we are witnessing an unprecedented revolution led by the widespread use of
electronic devices (mobile phones, tablets, laptops
and netbooks, to name but a few), and the consolidation of the Internet as an indispensable global
network which provides plentiful resources. This
technological ‘brave new world’ has led speakers
to search for ways to conceptualise new realities,
which lately are characterised by being all-in-one
devices: for instance, smartphones are progressively replacing single-purpose devices such as full
cameras or GPS navigators.
This tendency towards hybrid technologies has
been conspicuously reflected in recently coined
words, many of which are ‘blends’ or combinations
of two – or, more rarely, three – source words into
one through ‘simple concatenation or through concatenation coupled with overlap of shared phonological segments’ (Kelly, 1998: 579). That is to
say, the merger between words becomes apparent
both in the form (or morphology) and meaning of
the new blended lexical item. Some present-day
epitomes of technological hybridity are phablet
(<phone + tablet), vlog (<video + blog), adware
(<advertisement + software), mactel (<Macintosh
+ Intel) or even machinima (<machine + cinema)
‘an animated film created entirely on a computer
and “filmed” using computer game technology or
graphics software’.
One may wonder why blends have been – and
still are – so popular in general language use and
specific fields such as electronic devices or
advancements. One possible answer is that blends
may convey information more effectively than
two different words. This would be true if all
blends were transparent, that is, if their meanings
were quickly retrieved. Unfortunately, this is not
applicable in most cases; as Lehrer (2003: 371)
points out, blends ‘don’t increase efficiency. In
fact, they create more effort to interpret – at least
at first, until readers and hearers have figured out
what the source words are and what they mean.’
Other authors point out their similarity with word
plays. Kelly even calls them ‘lexical teases’ (1998:
586). Yet, it seems that the main motivations behind
their popular coinage go far beyond mere
AMANDA ROIG-MARÍN
holds a Bachelor’s Degree in
English Studies (with
‘Extraordinary Award’)
and is a member of the
Lexicology and
Lexicography Research
Group at the University of
Alicante, Spain. Her main
research interests include
English lexicology, mutual lexical influences
between Spanish and English and, more recently,
historical linguistics. She has published on these
areas and delivered papers at national and
international conferences, the latest being held at
York St John University, Gothenburg University
and the University of Wroclaw.
Email: [email protected]
doi:10.1017/S0266078416000274
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English Today 128, Vol. 32, No. 4 (December 2016). Printed in the United Kingdom
© 2016 Cambridge University Press
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playfulness. To quote Lehrer again, ‘We are surrounded by stimuli vying for our attention (newspapers, magazines, radio, TV) and thousands of
advertisements in all of the above. Therefore,
using a novel clever word is likely to catch our attention and get us read or listen to what is being presented. Then when a word-formation device like
blending becomes common, other speakers and
writers create similar forms by analogy simply because it is fashionable to do so; they want to show
that they, too, are trendy, creative, and cool.’
(2007: 116)
Almost a decade on, this idea is still relevant, but
nowadays it is difficult not to find people – especially among the young – immersed in their online
activities without even noticing the surrounding
environment. Hence, the target audience of this
type of attention-grabbing words is now mainly
composed of netizens, who are most of the time
‘connected’ to their devices and linked social
media virtually all the time.
This, together with the speaker’s expressive
needs arising out of the creation and extended
use of electronic devices, are central to an understanding of the invention of such words as ringxiety (<ring + anxiety), defined as ‘the confusion
experienced by a group of people when a cell
phone rings and no one is sure whose phone it is;
mistaking a faint sound for the ringing of one’s
cell phone’1 or geeksta (<geek + gangsta) rap ‘a
form of rap music with lyrics relating to computers,
technology, and engineering’2.
Given the vast number of words denoting technology and blended realities, in the next section I
will proceed to analyse and sort out my data into categories. The criteria followed to establish the classification below are based on the form of these words
(i.e. their morphology) and their sound patterns (or
phonological make-up) to a lesser extent.
A taxonomy of cyber-blends
This section will provide an overview of different
types of cyber-blends based on the data collected
over the period of fifteen years (2000–2015). Since
dictionaries cannot keep up with the constantly increasing number of lexical items coined, I made use
of two online databases of neologisms, namely
Word Spy (<www.wordspy.com>) and The Rice
University Neologisms Database (<neologisms.rice.
edu>), to retrieve truly novel blends. This preliminary
work resulted in a total of 1133 words from the Rice
Database and 301 words from Word Spy. Out of
these, I produced a list of provisional blends in the
field of new technologies, which is undoubtedly one
‘BL ENDED’ CYBER -NEOLOGISMS
of the most fertile areas nowadays. This shows the
newness and ‘trendiness’ of this type of word,
which simultaneously signify two realities that have
emerged from the use of new technologies, namely
smartphones, computers or mobile phones.
The trends identified are thus grounded in quantitative data. Likewise, it is important to state that
the small sample of words described may be
ephemeral creations and disappear altogether
along the realities they signify, as it occurred
with Windows Messenger chat service, which was
in vogue at the beginning of the new millennium
but now is completely outdated. Only time will tell.
Within the general categories of electronic devices,
the greater frequency of use of specific words (e.g.
LOL, web, internet, and blog) and extra-linguistic entities (Google, Facebook, twitter, etc.) makes a further
classification into sub-categories possible:
(1) ‘Words which share web as a common element’. Besides well-known examples (e.g. webcam (<web + camera) or webinar (<web +
seminar)), there are others such as webjack
(<web + hijack) ‘to redirect a legal site address
to an illegal website’, webvertise (<web + advertise) ‘to advertise on the web’, webisode
(<web + episode) ‘a television episode made
to be watched online’, webonics (<web +
ebonics) ‘the language employed by internet
users during online game play as well as in
weblogs and forums’ or wedsite (<wedding
+ website) ‘a website in which a couple
updates information about their wedding’.
(2) ‘Internet-based words’. Some of them include
Internot (<Internet + not) ‘not having full access to the Internet’, splinternet (<splinter +
Internet) ‘the internet splintered into multiple
segments, streams, or classes based on factors
such as cost, speed, platform, or political motivations’3, or sneakernet (<sneaker + network)
‘the transfer of files from one computer to another using external hard or removable drives’.
(3) ‘Blog-based blends’. It is worth noting that the
items of this third category may involve split
and subsequent letter re-combinations. For instance, fake in flog (<fake + blog) has been segmented into an f, which, even though it does not
correspond to a syllable, acquires meaning on its
own when combined with log. In those cases,
both source words treated independently pose
no problem for the cyber reader to understand
the resulting blend: the meaning of vlog -that
is, ‘a video blog’– is directly derived from
3
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video and blog, and the same applies to blogebrity (<blog + celebrity) ‘a popular blogger’.
However, one may initially experience
some difficulties in understanding more infrequent words such as splog (<spam + blog),
blogiary (<blog + diary) and doucheblog
(<douchebag + blog), if these have not been
previously encountered and are presented
decontextualised, without any gloss or explanation of the source words besides.
(4) ‘Names of social networking services in combination with existing words’:
(4.1) ‘Instagram’, embedded in Dronestagram
(<drone + Instagram) ‘posts of aerial
pictures’ or Instaglam (<Instagram +
glamour) ‘term used in make-up advertising to encourage people to submit
glamorous pictures’ or ‘an event hosted
by Good Morning America where people submit pictures to Instagram to
have a chance at this makeover’4.
(4.2) ‘Facebook’ in drunkbook (<drunk +
Facebook) ‘to write on Facebook under
the influence of alcohol’, facecrook
(<Facebook + crook) ‘an individual who
uses Facebook to commit, plan, or talk
about a crime’ or failbook (<fail +
Facebook)-used derogatorily to refer to
Facebook.
(4.3) ‘Twitter’ in Twitterverse (<Twitter +
universe) ‘postings on Twitter considered collectively’; twitticism, based on
the word witticism to which the coiner
has added a ‘t’ to specify the source
of that witty remark; twimmolation
(<Twitter + immolation) ‘the ruin of a
person’s reputation because of insensitive Twitter posts’, twintern (<Twitter
+ intern) ‘an intern responsible for monitoring and submitting messages on a
company’s social media accounts’.
Interestingly, there is another major
trend of words which use tweet as a
root: among others, tweetheart
(< Tweet + heart), which playfully
draws on the phonetically similar sweetheart, ‘someone who loves Twitter and
uses it a great deal’; twitchfork
(<Twitter + pitchfork) ‘an organised
campaign on Twitter to express discontent or attack targets’, subtweet
(<subliminal + tweet) ‘a subliminal
tweet’, and tweetup (<Tweet + meetup)
‘a real world meeting between people
who know each other through Twitter’.
(5) The search engine Google has also prompted
the creation of blended forms such as google
fu (<Google + kung fu) ‘ability to use Google
to find the information one seeks quickly’
and googledygook (<Google + gobbledygook), which, curiously enough, has adopted
several meanings. According to the Rice
Neologisms Database5, it means ‘hits returned
by a Google search which have little or no
relation to the intended object of the search’
whereas Urban Dictionary6 defines it as ‘the
unintelligible HTML code spat out by
Google websites when you cut and paste a
hyperlink to a page into some other document
or web site’.
(6) The use of mobile phones and its associated tendency to promote abbreviated forms of language
(notably in SMS messaging) has also given way
to words such as mobisode (<mobile + episode)
‘a short programme or highlights from a longer
one intended to be viewed on a small mobile
screen’, mupload (<mobile + upload) ‘uploading content from a mobile phone to a website
without a computer’, intexticated (<intoxicated
+ text) ‘a person constantly concerned with
reading or sending text messages’, smishing
(<SMS + phishing) ‘an attempt to deceive a person into giving personal information by pretending to be a trustworthy entity in
e-communication’, or smexting (<smoking +
texting) ‘texting on a mobile phone during a
break for smoking’. The last two may possibly
have been created by analogy with sexting as
they also refer to two actions performed at the
same time. Likewise, there are also terms
based on the initials LOL such as lolbertarian
(<LOL + libertarian) ‘libertarian whose views
are so extreme as to invite mockery’7, lolarious
(<LOL + hilarious) and lollertaining (< LOL +
entertaining), both of which jocularly refer to
something very comical.
(7) The last group comprises what I have deemed
to be ‘self-terms’, as they foreground the
importance of the individual in today’s consumerist society. Some of these are narcisstick
(<narcissistic + selfie stick) ‘a pejorative name
for a selfie stick’, meformer (<me + informer)
‘a user who posts photographs or status
4
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updates about himself/herself’, and ussie ‘a
picture taken by one of the participants of
the group photo’, word derived by the analogous derivative form selfie (<self + ie). That
is why in the database its etymology is
explained as a combination of us + selfie although there is not a formal parallel between
the two terms and the blend.
One just needs to consider the remarkable instability of words sharing blog as one of the two source
words (e.g. blogebrity, flog, vlog, blogject, etc.), or
to compare pairs of words such as mobisode (<mobile + episode) – mupload (<mobile + upload) or
vlog (<video + blog) – vidiot (<video + idiot), to
notice how the same words (i.e. mobile, video)
have been differently clipped to create a harmonious fusion. The same can be applied to Twitter/
tweet, in which the variation is even more noticeable (e.g. in tweetup, twimmolation, twintern,
twitchfork or even twitticism) because of the two
different existing word-forms (twit and tweet).
The evidence leads me to think that we are witnessing the formation of an established pattern of
what Frath (2005) calls ‘hamburger type’ in our
everyday technological domain. According to
Frath (2005: 6), the ‘hamburger type’ or ‘h-type
blends’ initially started as blend creations (the prototypical case quoted is cheeseburger <cheese + hamburger – hence the name of the paradigm) but
subsequently began to function as parts of regular
compounds in which the meaning of the blend
was transferred to the final part of the word
(e.g., –burger → tofuburger or –capade → sexcapade or boozecapade). Only time and the frequency
of use will ratify if word components based on blog
and twitter/tweet can achieve autonomy and thus
start to be used productively, as happened with the
sequel series (e.g. interquel and prequel) or the literati series (digerati, glitterati, etc.).
As regards their sound or phonological component, as already hinted, there is also a certain degree
of fusion implicit in some of the blends compiled.
This has underlying semantic motivations. As
Brdar-Szabó & Brdar (2008: 176) suggest, ‘the reduction in the conceptual distance between the
input words is signalled by the reduction of their
phonological distance, i.e. by their fusion’. This fusion can be attested not only in vowel overlaps as
in wikiality (<Wikipedia + reality), twimmolation
(<Twitter + immolation), tweetup (<tweet + meetup),
or webonics (<web + ebonics), but also in vowel +
‘BL ENDED’ CYBER -NEOLOGISMS
consonant overlaps (e.g. wedsite [<wedding + website] or narcisstick [<narcissistic + selfie stick]).
Final remarks
As a concluding comment, it is worth restating that
the words previously described may become dated
as their technological referents become obsolete.
Still, I believe, other blends may stand the test of
time and prove to be more than simple nonce formations. This has already been exhibited by wellestablished lexis in the field of new technologies
such as malware.
The patterns (such as the blog, Internet, or webbased words) and individual lexical creations
examined epitomise the complexity and wit behind
the creation of these short, yet powerful, word
fusions. Blends are much more than clipped juxtapositions of source words: their coinage involves
playing with sounds, sense relations and, all in
all, reversing our expectations as to what we consider to be existing and ‘permissible’ words.
Consequently, decoding a novel blend poses a
challenge to the reader/hearer, who has to recognise the source words and infer the intended meaning. This makes lexical blending a unique form of
word ‘game’ which invites us to use our creative
skills to their fullest potential.
Notes
1 <www.wordspy.com/index.php?word=ringxiety>
2 <www.wordspy.com/index.php?word=geeksta>
3 <www.wordspy.com/index.php?word=splinternet>
4 <neologisms.rice.edu/index.php?a=term&d=1&t=
18445>
5 <neologisms.rice.edu/index.php?a=term&d=1&t=
80>
6 <www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=
Googledygook>
7 <www.wordspy.com/index.php?word=lolbertarian>
References
Brdar-Szabó, R. & Brdar, M. 2008. ‘On the Marginality of
Lexical Blending.’ Jezikoslovlje, 9(1–2), 171–194.
Frath, P. 2005. ‘Why is there no ham in a hamburger? A study
of lexical blends and reanalysed morphemisation.’ RANAM:
Recherches Anglaises et Nord Amércaines, 38, 99–112.
Kelly, M. 1998. ‘To “Brunch” or to “Brench”: Some Aspects
of Blend Structure.’ Linguistics, 36, 579–590.
Lehrer, A. 2003. ‘Understanding trendy neologisms.’ Rivista
di Linguistica, 15, 369–382.
Lehrer, A. 2007. ‘Blendalicious.’ In J. Munat (ed.) Lexical
Creativity, Texts and Contexts. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins, pp. 115–136.
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