Blended word?

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Sep 17, 2010, at 11:27 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:

> At 2:19 PM -0400 9/17/10, Bill Palmer wrote:
>> A caller to NPR's Diane Rehm Show today complained about
>> "deflamatory" comments made about the president.  I thought I had
>> misheard, but he repeated it.
>>
>> I'm sure there's a term for this type of hybrid creation.
>>
>> Bill Palmer
>>
> blend? portmanteau?

inadvertent blends and (intentional) portmanteaus are often both referred to as "blends"; they clearly have elements in common, though they arise in different ways.

inadvertent blends do sometimes propagate themselves throughout a stretch of text, though that behavior is more likely to happen with classical malapropisms (where the speaker/writer believes, alas incorrectly, that they're using the appropriate word).

"deflamatory" is modestly frequent on the web, apparently occurring even in legal writing. and sometimes occurs with "defamatory" in the same text.

it's almost surely a mistake, but it could be any of several different mistakes: inadvertent blending of "defamatory" and "inflammatory" (most of the contexts -- "racist and deflamatory", "malicious and "deflamatory" -- would support either adjective); or a Fay/Cutler malapropism (aiming for "defamatory" but coming up with "deflamatory" instead); or a classical malapropism (aiming for "deflamatory", not knowing that most of the rest of the world has "defamatory" instead).  indeed, a particular occurrence of "deflamatory" might have arisen in any one of these three ways.

one result of this is that we don't even have a name for the "surface" phenomenon, disregarding the different possible sources for it -- since it could be a combo (related to two elements) or a phonological misfire (related to only one element, with perhaps some facilitating effect from others).

(you could try to get some information from the original speaker/writer, if you can get hold of them.  in particular, you can ask them if that's what they meant to say -- but some people see the very question as some kind of accusation, and might then *either* retreat self-critically, saying that it wasn't what they meant at all, *or* self-defensively latch onto the item as their own.  if they say, without reflecting on things, that yes, that's what they meant  to say, doesn't everyone say that, what do *you* say?  then if they try to correct your "defamatory" to their "deflamatory", you're almost surely looking at a classical malapropism.  but if they say that, yes, they have "defamatory" too, but that's not the same thing as "deflamatory", you have a classical malapropism *plus* its standard base word, with semantic differentiation.)

i'll probably file it as an inadvertent blend, but with notes about alternative possibilities.

arnold

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