Talking About Words

Some residents of the University’s home state identify themselves as Michiganders, while others opt for Michiganians as more high-toned. A few even like Michiganite. Prof. Richard W. Bailey of the English department has traced the first documented use of "Michigander" to an 1848 speech by Abraham Lincoln. In Nineteenth Century English (University of Michigan Press, 1996), Bailey cites Lincoln’s usage as an example of word-formation by blending — Michigan + gander. Forming a word by blending parts of others, Bailey says, “was made famous by Lewis Carroll, who in 1872 devised chortle as a blend of chuckle and snort. Such creations he called ‘portmanteau words,’ drawing on the idea of a piece of luggage containing compartments.” [See box.] Bailey lists other portmanteau words, including squattocracy (1843 < squatter + aristocracy, Australia), chattermag ‘chatterbox’ (coined by William Barnes from chattering + magpie, 1844), squarson (1876 < squire + parson), slanguage (1885 <slang + language), insinuendo (1885 < insinuation + innuendo), beerage (1891 <beer + peerage), brunch (1896 < breakfast + lunch), smog (1905 < smoke + fog). “For the most part, these blends were, at least initially, intentionally

facetious,” Bailey says. Lincoln’s rhetoric probably fit Bailey’s requirements. In a July 27, 1848, speech in the US House of Representatives, the young Illinois Whig was assailing Lewis Cass, the first governor of the Michigan Territory, who was campaigning for the presidency at the time, and running on a “popular sovereignty" (i.e., “state’s rights”) platform that would have allowed the expansion of slavery into territory gained in the Mexican

War. Lewis Cass Lincoln accused Cass and the Democrats of campaigning on the coat tails of the late General and President Andrew Jackson, that is, of exaggerating their military accomplishments: “Like a horde of hungry ticks you have stuck to the tail of the Hermitage lion [Jackson] to the end of his life,” Lincoln said, “and you are still sticking to it, and drawing a loathsome sustenance from it, after he is dead. … But in my hurry I was very near closing on the subject of military tails before I was done with it. There is one entire article of the sort I have not discussed yet; I mean the military tail you Democrats are now engaged in dovetailing onto the great Michigander [emphasis added]. “Yes sir, all his biographers (and they are legion) have him in hand, tying him to a military tail, like so many mischievous boys tying a dog to a bladder of beans. True, the material they have is very limited; but they drive at it, might and main. He invaded Canada without resistance, and he outvaded it without pursuit. As he did both under orders, I suppose there was, to him, neither credit or discredit in them; but they [are made to] constitute a large part of the tail.” “You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,” said Alice. “Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called ‘Jabberwocky’?”

“Let’s hear it,” said Humpty Dumpty. “I can explain all the poems that were ever invented—and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.” This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse:

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

“That’s enough to begin with,” Humpty Dumpty interrupted:

“there are plenty of hard words there.

‘Brillig’ means four o’clock in the afternoon—the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.”

“That’ll do very well,” said Alice: “and ‘slithy’?”

“Well, ‘slithy’ means ‘lithe and slimy.’

‘Lithe’ is the same as ‘active’"

You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”

—From Through the Looking Glass

