Portmanteaux

A portmanteau is formed when the writer joins two or more words together to create a new word. The word “portmanteau” comes from the French words “to carry” and “cloak.” Throughout Finnegans Wake Joyce uses a wide variety of portmanteaux as does Lewis Carroll in Jabberwocky, and Through the Looking Glass. Two meanings are packed into one word with a disjunctive element. Haiku poet Nick Virgilio famously created the portmanteau fossilence in the spirit of haiku.