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Golf Hotel Whiskey: for pilots and aviation enthusiasts

Craptastic newspeak

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Portmanteau: a word formed by blending sounds from two or more words and combining their meanings. All the cool kids are doing it now but that doesn’t mean it’s good, right?

Hijacking perfectly good words

 

Take ‘neutraceuticals’ for example. It combines two perfectly good words into one dismal one.

  • Nutrient: a chemical that an organism needs to live and grow.
  • Pharmaceutical: chemical substances intended for use in medical diagnosis, cure, treatment, or prevention of disease.
  • Neutraceutical: supplements that are “not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease”, but designed to promote ‘wellness’.

So nutraceuticals are in fact, neither nutri nor ceutical.

 

More frenemies

  1. Bromance: brother, romance – a platonic friendship between two men
  2. Frenemy: friend, enemy – an enemy disguised as a friend or to a friend who is also a rival
  3. Staycation: stay, vacation – a holiday spent at home
  4. Twi-hards : Twilight, Die-hard – used to describe fans of the Twilight series
  5. Refudiate: repudiate and refute, coined by Sarah Palin
  6. Octodamus: octopus, Nostradamus- used to describe Paul the psychic octopus
  7. Insania: insanity, mania – coined by Peter Andre
  8. Scandal-gate: (any scandal, Watergate)
  9. Gleek: Glee,geek – fans of the TV show Glee
  10. Bridezilla: bride, Godzilla- a demanding bride-to-be
  11. Brangelina: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie
  12. Mockumentary: mock, documentary
  13. Guesstimate: guess, estimate
  14. Scrooge: screw, gouge – coined by Charles Dickens
  15. Squiggle: squirm, wiggle
  16. Chortle: chuckle, snort – coined by Lewis Carroll
  17. Portmanteau: from the French porte (carry),manteau (coat) – hence a coat hook
  18. Lipsmackinthirstquenchinacetastinmotivatingood
    buzzincooltalkinhighwalkinfastlivinevergivincool
    fizzin
    Pepsi’s used this 100-letter portmanteau in their 1973 TV and film advertising

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Julien says

    July 25, 2010 at 23:58

    Good post, but did you intend to post this on Bad Language instead?

    Reply
    • Matthew Stibbe says

      July 26, 2010 at 04:27

      Yes, indeed. I use Live Writer and occasionally mispost from one blog to the other. Matthew

      Reply
  2. Sylvia says

    July 26, 2010 at 09:34

    Haha, I thought exactly that. We must be able to come up with some aviation examples though, don't you think?

    Reply
    • Matthew Stibbe says

      July 26, 2010 at 10:17

      Yes, we must be able to! 🙂 Here are two for starters. Gulfstream PlaneView or Dassault EASy are two examples of marketing over substance in aviation.

      Reply

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Matthew Stibbe
Matthew Stibbe is CEO of Articulate Marketing and Turbine, the easy, online way to deal with office paperwork. He has an FAA CPL/IR and an EASA PPL/IR and sometimes flies a Cirrus SR-22. He also writes about wine at Vincarta and being a better manager at Geek Boss.
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