What is (e.g.) "danged --> hanged" called?

[Joel S. Berson]

Thanks for the terms.  But I note that "dang (v)" in OED2, "A
euphemistic substitute for damn", has its earliest cite 1793-7.  So
is "I'll be danged if I know why" really a blend from "damn" and
"hang"?  If not, what would the term be?

(The only OED2 cites for "danged" are a 1910 past passive "I was
danged" and an 1886 ppl. adj.(or adv?) "Danged shady lot".)

Joel

At 9/25/2005 12:49 PM, you wrote:
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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       "Cohen, Gerald Leonard" <gcohen at UMR.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: What is (e.g.) "danged --> hanged" called?
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>         Original message from Joel S. Berson, Sept. 25, 2005:
> > If it were the case that the expression "I'll be hanged if I know
> why" arose from "I'll be danged if I know why" (or vice versa, I
> suppose), what would that process be called by grammarians?
> >
>* * *
>
>           It's vice versa. "I'll be danged" probably derives from a
> blending of "I'll be damned" and "I'll be hanged," and the
> linguistic term for this feature is "a blend." Also, linguists
> distinguish between "lexical blends" (e.g. "splotch" from "blotch"
> and "spot" and "syntactic blends" (e.g. "time and again" (from
> "time after time" and "again and again").
>
>                 "Danged" looks like a lexical blend.
>
>         Gerald Cohen
>         P.S. For syntactic blends there are two more terms:
> "contamination" and "anacoluthon."  I've done a lot of work on
> syntactic blends but offhand can't recall "contamination" and
> "anacoluthon" being applied to lexical blends too.