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

Blog + Derivations = Blogivations

It is amazing how many words are created on a daily basis; and many, if not the majority, of these words are derived by the combining of morphemes (see last Thursday's post). Most people know that the word blog is a combination of the words web and log. What people may not know is that there are 214 derivations of the word blog listed in the Oxford English Corpus (according to Newsweek's recent review of the book "Damp Squid"). Actually, this Newsweek article was dated December 22, 2008, so there are certainly more derivations by now. The examples listed in Newsweek were: blogstipation, bloggocks, and blogospherical.

Some other interesting blog-derived words are:

blogebrity

blogophile

blogoholic

blogernacle

bloghogging

blogiarism

bloginity

blogfly

And, of course - blogivations

Morphemes Make Creative Words

A favorite blog of mine documents unusual and creative words that are found across the web. Even the name of the blog (Wordlustitude) exemplifies creativity with a word. One of the ways new words are created is by combining morphemes in different ways and by adding morphemes to existing words. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a language.

Following is a diagram of the different types of morphemes.

A free morpheme is what its name implies - a morpheme that can stand on its own as a word.

A bound morpheme must be attached to another morpheme.

A lexical morpheme is also called a content morpheme and can usually be defined with a synonym.

A grammatical morpheme is defined by its grammatical function and usually does not have a synonym.

A derivational morpheme creates (derives) a new word.

An inflectional morpheme changes the form of a word.

Here are some of my favorite words from Wordlustitude that come from the creative combination and/or addition of morphemes:

buttlickee
dowhateverer
co-doofus
hoo-hoo-ectomy
diaper-tastrophe
buttmunchosaur
sasquatchtastic
slimeballitude

If you can't think of a word for something - create one.