Last night I went out to dinner with Janet and Ryan. This was a treat, because Ryan doesn't like to sit still for long, so going out to eat is not something that we do very often.

We went to Boston Pizza in Kitchener, which was the location featured a couple months ago on CBC's Venture, when a waitress switched jobs with their CEO for a week; hilarity ensued.

We sat down and a few minutes later, another family sat at the table next to us. There was a woman about our age with two little girls, maybe 7 or 8 years old. I mention this because it figures prominently in the punchline of this story.

Ryan discovered the crayons, so he had little interest in his bug-shaped noodles and tomato sauce. At 21 months, he is still learning the difference between scribbling and nibbling.

The conversation between Janet and me went something like this:



I blurted out this last word rather LOUDLY.

Now remember the two little girls at the table next to us?

Their mother looked over and shot me the Look Of Death.

You know, the how-dare-you-say-that-word-in-front-of-my-precious-kids-you-social-reject look.

I get that a lot.

I realize now that I was wrong. I should have said "compulsive sex addict" instead.

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The "-holic" suffix is an example of a cran-morph.

Why is it called a "cran-morph"? Think "cran-apple juice" instead of "cranberry and apple juice." This is made-up because on its own, cran is not a word; it is meaningless. Cranberry is not a compound word, unlike blueberry which is "blue" + "berry" which are both actual words.

Another example of a cran-morph is the word lukewarm. It looks like "luke" + "warm" but luke is not itself a word; in fact, in English it only appears as part of lukewarm

I find these words to be fascinating markers in the evolution of our language.

When I was in elementary school, we had the M-S Read-a-thon every year. (We read books and collected pledges to raise money for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada.) And there is a fundraising event every year on TV called the Jerry Lewis Telethon. Both readathon and telethon use the "-thon" ending from the word "marathon" which is a 26-mile endurance race. This might all make sense if mara meant "to run" and thon meant "a lot," but the words "mara" and "thon" are meaningless on their own. Marathon is the name of a town in Greece.

In 1972, a break-in at the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate Hotel eventually led to President Nixon's impeachment. The name of the hotel came to symbolize the scandal itself, so that "Watergate" is popularly known to mean the break-in, rather than the hotel. Today, we add "-gate" to indicate a scandal or cover-up. A Google search on plamegate returns 1,210,000 hits; there are also thousands of hits on such terms as enrongate, iraqgate, bushgate, and many others.

You can go into any fast food restaurant today and order a chicken burger and they will know exactly what you mean: a chicken sandwich that looks like a hamburger. But the word hamburger doesn't mean a burger made from ham. It is a German word meaning from Hamburg, the city where the food originated.

One of my favourite word formations is the use of "-tacular" (from spectacular) to indicate something amazing or wonderful. I actually use these words all the time. (This car is fastacular! This chocolate is sweetacular! This web site is blogtacular!)

However, because the words are actually intended to suggest spectacularity and do not pretend that spectacular is "spec" + "tacular," these are not true cran-morphs, but portmanteaux.

The difference between a portmanteau and a cran-morph is that a portmeanteau combines the meanings of two different words (cyborg from "cybernetic" and "organism"). It does not suggest that "cyb" or "org" are words on their own.

Even Ryan already has a favourite portmanteau, although he can't pronounce it yet. It's the tangelo, which is an orange-like fruit. It's a hybrid of a tangerine and a pomelo.

Other portmanteaux in popular use include ebonics ("ebony" + "phonics"), avionics ("aviation" + "electronics"), infomercial ("information" + "commercial"), and the KFC spork ("spoon" + "fork").

Speaking of The Simpsons earlier, that show has also given us many portmanteaux, including sacrilicious, velocitator, tomacco, poindextrose, Viagrogaine, and Presbylutheran. Mmmmm, tomacco...

At work, I often use the words prosumer ("professional" + "consumer"), alphanumeric ("alphabetical" + "numeric"), pixel ("picture" + "element"), and transceiver ("transmitter" + "receiver").

Then you have your geographical portmanteaux, such as Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg) and Mexicali (the capital of Baja California, in Mexico).

These words are all around us. Embrace them! Better yet, huggle them!