Was reading a quiz type thing and although it seems easy it stumped me
Is there a name for when you take two words join them together to make a compound word and that compound word isn’t related at all to either of the original words.
I’m not sure exactly what you mean. Compound words often have no relation to the two root terms.
Quirk and Greenbaum (A Concise Grammar of Contemporary English) mention “bihuvrihi compounds,” which name the entire thing by specifying some features (e.g., “paperback”). They also mention “reduplicatives” (“seesaw,” etc.), and blends (“brunch”) but I don’t think that’s what you’re getting at. Q&G give no other names for compounds.
There are “portmanteau words,” invented by Louis Carroll to indicate words made of two put together (i.e., “chortle” comes from “chuckle” and “snort”). “Modem” might fit into that category, which Q&G would probably categorize as “blends.”
There’s also tmesis, where one word is inserted into another, like “out-bloody-rageous.” That’s fairly rare, too, though.
“What we have here is failure to communicate.” – Strother Martin, anticipating the Internet.
Do you mean a word like “blackguard”?
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I mean like Clothespin. It consists of two words clothes and pin. However the compound word clothespin relates to both clothes and pin.
I am looking for the name when the compound word formed by two independent words, does not have specific meaning to the independent words
Like CarPet?
The word you’re looking for is perhaps ‘portmanteau’?
Hmmm…
“port”+“man”+“toe”=“portmanteau”
Could be.
Now with 1000 posts of pure wisdom!
(or something)
In other words, like blackguard and not like clothespin.
Am I missing something? Can you give more examples?
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CONFOUNDED COMPOUNDED CONFUSION, madam, that’a jes’ what choo gut on yo’ hands, there, mam, I tell yir, sir!!
But…isn’t blackguard like blackboard. In that originally they were black? But I don’t have a good explaination for the guard part except that they are at the front of stores, etc. Anyway, I want a better example of this type of word.
I understand Markxxx to be looking for when you have the meaning of the compound word, it has nothing to do with the two root words. So, give an example of a word like that. I’m sure there is such a word, maybe, but I can’t think of one. Is there such a word?
Butterfly? No, I don’t like that one. A fly and a butterfly are insects that fly.
That’s my guess as well, if the original poster would clarify. And if so, blackguard (look it up) is one of those types of words. It is neither black nor a guard.
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