Things I used to forget before I had a place to write them down...etc.

From Et cetera

In my view, the Top 13 Ugliest Portmanteaux in the English language are as follows:

1. BRANGELINA
   Reeks of paparazzi and hip media jargon. From the perspective of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, it is not only a very ugly blend of two names, but it it's more the derisive and unprofessional user of the word in headlines that makes it all the more hurtful. If you were Bob and you married Trudy, how would you feel if the entire world referred to you as "Brudy" and there was nothing you could do about it?
2. PIZZONE
   This is one of those Westernized portmanteaux that has no reservations at all about pissing all over Italian culinary arts. Most Italian people are already offended by the fact that we make something called "pizza" that doesn't fairly represent authentic Italian pizza at all. Then, Pizza Hut comes around and starts selling a "pizzone," a portmanteau of pizza and calzone. A calzone is a folded-over pizza dough stuffed with a variety of meats and cheeses. A "pizzone" is also a folded-over pizza dough stuffed with a variety of meats and cheeses. Pizza Hut effectively stole the Italian formula and renamed it for their own in the eyes of the American public. Good game, Hut, but you're all a bunch of frauds in my eyes.
3. GUESSTIMATE
4. BOLLYWOOD
5. TOONIE
   I don't like to sound like a prude, but when it comes to certain issues, I know that I do. I happened to be alive back in 1996 when the Canadian government opted to deprecate the two-dollar bill and replace it with a two-dollar coin. In Canada, we had had a one-dollar coin with a loon on its tailside face for some time and it became colloquially known as a loonie. In retrospect, I don't really approve of any cutesy sorts of plays on words when it comes to naming national currency, but when you take that cutesy name and blend it with the word two because the voice of the public can't come up with anything better, I was ready to launch an opposing lobby group. I was also 12, so I didn't exactly have a legion of supporters, but I did try and make some effort to convince people I talked to at school to call it a deuce. As you can see, it didn't work, since Two Dollar Coin (Canada) at Wikipedia now redirects to Toonie by popular consensus.
6. GAYDAR
7. BLAXPLOITATION
   A crude merging of black and exploitation that was used to describe films that were made in the 70s with purposefully low budgets, instead relying on a cast of black characters and "urban" themes to fuel box office sales from an exclusively black audience. The implied theory is that black moviegoers would pay to see these shows over other commercial films simply because it included stereotypically black themes, despite otherwise low production values. The whole notion just reeks of blatant racism to me, but interestingly, the vast majority of blaxploitation films were made by and supported by black people, right down to the name of the genre. This wouldn't fly in today's culture, I don't think. Eventually, various human rights lobby groups were put together to put an end to blaxploitation films and the term has since faded into obscurity among my generation. After all, the original blaxploitation masterpiece Shaft was re-made with Samuel L. Jackson as a commercial success without ever marketing to an exclusively black audience. Or cutting budget costs to exploit special interests just to save a dollar.
8. GINORMOUS
9. BOOTYLICIOUS
10. HONGCOUVER
11. EDUTAINMENT
12. WITRICITY
    Wireless electricity. Must we shorten EVERYTHING???
13. BLOG
    Here's one of those happy-go-lucky, pop culture-fueled, too-lazy-to-type-out-the-whole-word sort of portmanteau that fuses web and log to describe something that already has more synonyms than I can count on two hands. I'm fighting a losing battle by refusing to acknowledge its existence, but in addition to seeing nothing wrong with writing out "web log," I also don't think it's a very good descriptor of an online diary when you could very easily be "logging" things other than personal complaints, localized gossip and day-to-day experiences.

[edit] What the fuck is a portmanteaux?

Well, first of all, it's portmanteau singular, and portmanteaux plural. If you couldn't figure out what a portmanteau is from looking at the list above, I would be surprised, but not unforgivably disappointed. A portmanteau is a word that is fused with one or more other existing words to form a collective, unified meaning.

The best examples are those that have worked their way so deeply into the English language that we often forget that they are blended of different words. In particular, motel is a portmanteau of motor and hotel; smog is a portmanteau of smoke and fog; and alphabet is a portmanteau of alpha and beta, the first two letters of the Greek alphabet.

Also of note, the origins of the word are (rather obviously) French, but in their native language, a portemanteau refers to a coat hanger.

[edit] See also

• Roshir
• brilliant pangrams