I spoke to my father on the phone last night. We enjoy quizzing each other on new words, and these word discussions are usually prompted by the same conversational exchange:
Dad: So, how are you?
Ann: Good.
Dad: Come on, you have to start using some better adjectives. You always say "good"!
Last night, the first word on offer was "blaccent." After listening to "Sounding Black" on Studio 360 this Sunday, I latched on to this word: black + accent = blaccent. It's a portmanteau, a word that, like manny or grool (Mean Girls fans will remember that one), is formed by combining two existing words.
The next word up for discussion, of course, was portmanteau.
And finally, we talked about "bacronym," a portmanteau that is itself a language term. A bacronym is a retrofitted acronym: I discovered the word in relation to the term wiki, which originates from the Hawaiian word for "fast," but which has been bacronymed to mean "what I know is." If you're a fan of The Office, you've encountered a backronym before: when Michael talks about the swag he receives at conventions, he backronyms the word to mean "stuff we all get."
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