Blends for Friends—Winning Words for Wise Writers, Worthy Word Wranglers, and other Wanton Wrongdoers
by Blenda Portman-Toe
Published 2020. 84 pages + 943 pages of citations and etymologies
As linguistics continues its meteoric ascendance in the academic zeitgeist, scholarly and even not-so-scholarly writers would be well-advised to “get with the [minimalist] program” and take on the trappings of linguists and linguistics—in order to please and appease their soon-to-be intellectual lords and masters. There’s no better way to signal one’s in-group status than with a bit of jargon-heavy wordplay taken a tad too seriously. To that end, consummate bootlick Blenda Portman-Toe has gathered and shared a collection of linguistics-savvy word blends—sampled below—that are sure to impress your new linguistic overlord friends. Get your copy before the /aɪɚn fɪst/ descends and it is too late!
adjectiverb: a more efficient way of articulating your research interests for excited/bored linguists involved in the study of exciting/boring participles.
Anglo Saxong: a little studied contact language that arose in the mid 8th century between the Germanic settlers of the British Isles and speakers of the northern-most Hmongic language, spoken in south-central China by ca. 0.9 million people.
aspirationions: secondary articulation deployed when eating raw Allium cepa (or when reading satirical online publications such as The Onion).
auxiliary verbium: a piece of functional syntax which, like Erbium, is always found in a combinatorial configuration with other elements in the verb phrase.
Chom-blue-sky thinking: linguistic theories with a bit too much imagination.
circumstantial evidencefix: an infrequent word-building mechanism that allows for more than one interpretation.
derivational morphemerits: points earned for getting the longest possible word.
extraposition cannon: a particle beam weapon that has been moved further to the right on the field of battle for military emphasis.
fauxnology: a poorly analysed sound system.
grammarines: a group of highly trained analysts/annihilists of form-function mapping who are semper fideles to the data.
Henguest and Hors-ah! there you are!: a salutation for welcoming Germanic brothers into your home (in the hope they won’t pillage you).
implosiverification: the production of evidence favorable to a theory using only an ingressive airstream mechanism.
infixed wing aircraft: a flying machine with its wing in the middle.
lingua-labialternative comedy: left field stand-up of the tongue-on-upper lip (as opposed to tongue-in-cheek) variety.
linguistick: a multilingual bed bug.
long distance dependencybernetics: the study of how machine-human communication can handle topicalization, scrambling, etc.
morephology: an ever greater degree of word building.
morphologyrocopter: a device for taking a literal bird’s eye view of word formation.
n-ary branchinglish: a lect which is both theoretically unconstrained and interpretively ambiguous.
philollysticks: historical linguistics that sucks.
polysynthesis parameterror: a miscalculation in how large a language’s morpheme-to-word ratio is.
praygmatics: the contextual interpretation conditions on talk with the gods.
Stalinguistics: it’s off to Siberia with you if you don’t understand syntax.
subwayjacency/submarinejacency/substitutejacency: Inability of a wh- phrase to rise out of its clause due to being on the underpass/under sea/on the bench. There are many varieties of this cross-linguistically.
syntaxi rank: an array of private transport hire cars with systematic combinatorial properties.
Uncle Samantics: the personification of that darned federal interference in local meanings.
unihearsal grammar: the theory that all languages die one day.
unimmersal grammarine: a belief that all language will be submerged in a cataclysmic, end-of-days mega-tsunami.
wh-worder of the Garter: Quaint, archaic UK royal honor to those who ask too many questions.
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