"bromance"

[Laurence Horn]

Thanks much to Grant and Arnold for helping me recover from my
half-heimer. Yes, it was precisely words like "man date", the
homonymous "murse", "mangina" [sounds like another potential homonymy
there], "manopause", and such that I was trying to recall.  There are
more of these blends than we really need, and some are a lot more
execrable than others, although our rankings may differ...  (At least
"bromance" isn't one of the worst.)

LH

At 6:07 AM -0700 3/27/08, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>On Mar 26, 2008, at 8:27 PM, Larry Horn wrote:
>
>>... When I was trying to think of other blends/portmanteaux we've
>>discussed here that combine the 'man' with a stem, or possibly a
>>'bro-' as in the current case, or (I'm sure there are a bunch of
>>these) just an initial 'm-', all I could remember was "manzeer"
>>(a.k.a. "bro", for a male brassiere, from the Seinfeld episode).  I
>>know there are a bunch of other cases, especially for cases in which
>>the male protagonist is somehow marked, like 'male nurse/prostitute'
>>or the more recent 'male masseuse' [sic], only involving just the m-
>>of man/male instead of the full phrase or compound.  Can anyone help
>>fill in my blank?
>
>ADS-L discussion in march 2007, begun by mark peters on 3/21/07 with
>an initial list of "man words":
>
>   http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0703C&L=ADS-L&P=R6523&I=-3
>
>from "man bag" ("man-bag", "manbag"; also "man purse", "man-purse",
>"manpurse") through "murse" 'man purse' or 'male nurse'.
>
>my contribution, on 3/22/07:
>
>   regrettably, to go along with "mangina" and "manhole", many many
>hits for "man-pussy" and "man-cunt", with reference to gay men's
>anatomy. "man-cunt" also has hits in the sense 'man who is a cunt --
>worthless, stupid, etc.'
>
>(in a somewhat different vein, "mancrush" or "man crush" and "man
>date", both  involving straight guys.)
>
>earlier discussion, initiated by Carl Burnett on 9/30/05:
>
>  http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0510A&L=ADS-L&P=R239&I=-3
>
>arnold
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org