If I have two words – let’s say “lamp” and “vampire” and I put all of their letters together to form a new fantasy word. e.g. “vapamlimper” does this process have a name?
I already considered terms like portmanteau or blend word but they don’t quite hit the spot.
This is also not a pure neologism as there is an additional rule to it (must be all letters of two existing words).
Answer
The National Puzzlers’ League maintains a guide to wordplay terminology that has a few terms that might be useful. Some of these terms are commonly used, and others were coined by NPL members.
- transposal is any rearrangement of letters from a word or phrase to another word or phrase
- anagram, as defined by NPL, is a transposal where one arrangement forms a clue or description of the second arrangement. NPL imposes some additional rules for good anagrams; these are at the link.
- alternade would work, if your single word were formed by taking one letter at a time from each of the source words in order, e.g. HAT + ERS = HEARTS.
- rebade is a variation of the alternade that is also a rebus
- interlock is like an alternade, except the source words don’t have to be the same length
- transade would work, if your single word were formed by transposing each of your source words separately and then appending them together, e.g. ASH + REV = SHAVER.
- alterposal is like an alternade where the source words are transposed first
- transinterlock is like an interlock where one of the the source words is transposed first
Given these definitions, the example you have given, LAMP + VAMPIRE = VAPAMLIMPER, is merely a transposal, and since it is a protologism rather than a neologism, I would call it a transposal protologism or a protologistic transposal.
You could combine your source words using the more restrictive rules for one of the specific transposals to make things more interesting. For example, LAMP + VAMPIRE = VAMLAPIMPRE would be a protologistic interlock. LAMP + VAMPIRE = VAMMAPPIREL would be a protologistic transinterlock.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Oliver Bestwalter , Answer Author : shoover