Blending - Taking two or more expressions and shortening at least one of them. This results in a made-up word that is not part of everyday normal vocabulary. It is a useful tool for humor writers who desire to express a common, ordinary idea in an unfamiliar or surprising way or who seek to make something normally considered serious silly.
An Example from Literature: Lewis Carroll's 
My Try: Before the gavel call-to-order, Lou Ellen and her cronies gathered in their tight-knit clique, huddled against Junior League inclusiveness. Lou Ellen whispered, "I saw Netty in the Kroger parking lot yesterday. She was walking and smoking."
"Smalking," gasped Kathy Sue.
The group agreed that the Junior League Board must address this egregious error in ladylike ways. A necessary course of disciplinary action for Netty's breach of conduct, reflecting poorly on the group as a whole, was in order. Smalking has not ever and shall not ever be tolerated.
Give it a try yourself. Comment a blend, or, in another word, clombent, please.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Blending
(This post is brought to you as part of the April A to Z Challenge.)
April 4th - Catachresis
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Like this? Please 
12 comments:
Great post, I think blending has so many ways of expressing the word. I enjoyed the way you wrote about the word.
Hope you have a good week-end.
Yvonne,
Thanks, Yvonne. Blending is probably also one the ways that young children create unique vocabulary sets amongst themselves.
It can be a very fun writing technique.
Hi Lucy
Great post - very thought provoking - I didn't know about Chortle - and I love your Smalking example. I guess Blogging itself is also a blend (as it originally came from from Web Log?)
Thanks for visiting and following me - I'm going to do likewise here as I've enjoyed both your Alliteration and your Blending posts :-) Good luck with the rest of the A-Zing
All best
Karla
Karla,
Good point about the word Blog. Most people don't know where it came from.
My wife comes up with those kind of words all the time. Not really on purpose though...
Uh! I can't think of one!!! Rats. Fun post!
Omy...nice post. Nice to myou, suppose my blending isn't up to par. BItired. LOL
Nancy
N. R. Williams, The Treasures of Carmelidrium.
I like smalking and I'm intrigued by your story. But I can't think of my own blended example right now! It'll hit me around 2 in the morning :)
Book. Bonking. Booning. Boking. Emm...doesn't quite work.
I shall try a few others. Great post!
Ellie Garratt
clever idea!
Clidea?
I'm not very good at this. sounds like chlamydia.
You're funny!
Didn't know that is how chortle came about! Thank you for sharing...I love the humor in your writing!
Lucy, My attempt:
Talking + Eating Food = foodalking
Used in a sentence:
Friends are so busy today, they've stooped to foodalking on lunch breaks just to pick up a few extra BBF moments.
Thanks for the challenge. Loved it! I'll be sending some friends this way to try this exercise!
Post a Comment