Portmanteaux in engineering

Updated June 14, 2008

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New for October 2007! This page probably falls somewhere in between trivia and useless information, but we'll go ahead and paste it up anyway, on account of we have terabytes of bandwidth...

Robocop

Portmanteaux (that's the plural of portmanteau, do you ken, laddie?) are literary devices that combine two words into one with a blended meaning, like motel (motor hotel) and spork (spoon fork). This is similar, but different from an acronym, which uses just a letter or two of words in a string to produce a new word or name.

The origin of the word has something to do with a suitcase that had two compartments, according to Wikipedia. Check out Wikipedia's post on Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky and you'll learn portmanteau from the master.

Engineers (and their friends in marketing) tend to be portmanteau creators, without even knowing the term. We'll throw out a few here, if you can think of any more, send them in!

balun (balanced/unbalanced)

blog (web log)

email (electronic mail)

FraudoCAD (free AutoCAD)

Greengineering (green engineering, actually a trademark of a land development company that should be able to cash in on it)

HiFi (high fidelity, remember that?)

magnetron (magnet/electron) thanks to Giorgio from Italy!

modem (modulator demodulator) also thanks to Giorgio from Italy!

photonics (photo electronics)

radome (radar dome)

robocop (robot/cop)

rojo (rotary joint)

smog (smoke fog) (thanks to Drew!)

thermistor (thermal resistor)

transceiver (transmitter receiver) (thanks to Drew!)

varactor (voltage-variable capacitor)

varistor (voltage-variable resistor) (thanks to Drew!)

WiMax (wireless maximum)

WiFi (wireless fidelity)

Keep them coming, boys and girls!