Flexible Portmanteau Word Formation - Flexitarian

I just read an article about a practice called "flexitarianism" in the January 11, 2010 issue of Newsweek. While the article was indeed quite interesting, the part I found most interesting was the word "flexitarian".

According to thedailygreen.com, the American Dialect Society named the word "flexitarian" the "most useful word of the year" in 2003. The word is defined as a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat.

The reason I found the word so interesting has to do with the way it was formed.

Considering that the word "vegetarian", according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, is an irregular formation from vegetable (n.) + -arian, as in agrarian, etc. , a first instinct might be to wonder why the word "flexitarian" wouldn't have just been "flexarian" or "flexibarian.

Consider the following list of words that have been formed with the "-arian" suffix:

abecedarian
apiarian
authoritarian
barbarian
celibatarian
disciplinarian
grammarian
libertarian
nuditarian
octogenarian
parlamentarian
riparian
totalitarian
utilitarian
veterinarian
vocabularian
vulgarian

From this list, each of the words that include the "t" + "arian" have roots + suffixes that would include the "t" with or without the additional "arian" suffix (ex. authority, liberty, nudity). The same cannot be said for "flexitarian"; there is no word "flexity".

So what gives?

When properly analyzed, "flexitarian" is not formed by taking a root morpheme and adding two suffixes like many of the words from the above list. "Flexitarian" is a portmanteau word. It is a blend of the words "flexible" and "vegetarian".

flexible - flexi

vegetarian - tarian