blendedword

A blended word, or blend, is a word formed by combining parts of two or more words, or by merging their sounds. Blends yield a new item with its own meaning, and are studied as a distinct category of word formation in linguistics.

Blends commonly arise by clipping and overlapping: the beginning of one word is joined to the end of another (brunch from breakfast and lunch), or by merging shared phonemes (motel from motor and hotel).

Common examples include brunch, motel, spork (spoon + fork), blog (web log), and bridezilla (bride + Godzilla). Infomercial (information + commercial) is another well-attested blend, illustrating blending in advertising and media.

Blends are widely used in everyday speech, popular culture, and branding. Some become standard vocabulary, while others remain playful neologisms. They can appear as closed compounds, hyphenated forms, or as solid words without spaces.

In linguistics, blends are related to but distinct from portmanteaus; the latter term traditionally emphasizes a word that fuses two or more units into a single phonetic form, while blends encompass a broader range of fusion patterns.

See also neologism, portmanteau, and compound word.