The beautiful thing about language is that it changes to reflect the times. Sometimes we even have to coin our own words and phrases for new things! Unfortunately, few-to-none of us are William Shakespeare, so the new words usually end up being portmanteaus. The term means a word that’s constructed by taking some parts of two words, and making a new one. It’s also known as a blend in linguistics. Probably the most egregious use is meshing names of celebrity couples like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie into Brangelina, all in the name of efficiency of spreading celebrity gossip. It has other, legitimate uses, like making new state (the newly independent state of Tanganyika and Zanzibar chose “Tanzania”) or animal names (“liger” comes from “lion” and “tiger”).

Of course, many of these words come from urbandictionary.com, a website dedicated to user submitted definitions of new words. As such, many of them are neologisms, not seeing much official recognition… yet. However, if you start using them yourself, then who knows, maybe you’ll get them included in all sorts of prestigious dictionaries! If “meatspace” (meaning the non-virtual world, also known as “reality”) managed to get into Oxford dictionary, anything can! More info: urbandictionary (h/t: designtaxi)