Sometimes a word is formed by blending two words together. For example, the word motel was formed as motor hotel. This week we’ll look at some of these “blend words”. We’ll begin with one which, fitting last week’s theme, is a word that I learned recently. In fact, just a few day ago.

splog – (from spam blog): a fake blog, without meaningful content, set up to attract hits to generate advertising revenue or Google-ranking

There is active advertising to be done on blogs, too. … Google's Adsense service will automatically place context-related ads on a blog page, splitting the click-measured revenue with the blogger. So far, so good. But Adsense has set in motion an ugly arms race online as robot bloggers -- clever computer programs -- have generated hundreds of thousands of spam blogs, or "splogs."

A splog, though unreadable, is seeded with words that will attract Google ads. A computer-user may be annoyed at finding himself staring at a screen full of gibberish but click on an ad anyway, allowing the robot blogger to harvest revenue. This sleight of hand has the Numerati hard at work getting their software to distinguish between a blog and a splog.
– Wall Street Journal, Sept. 14, 2008, reviewing The Numerati by Stephen Baker

Isn’t splog a fun-sounding word? (Many blend-words have a funny sound to them: splog, smog, blotch, jounce, twirl, skuzzy, slosh and grungy.) So is today’s word. It was at first a verb, meaning “to squirm and wriggle”, but is now mostly used as a noun.

squiggle – a small wiggly mark or scrawl (verb: to squirm and wriggle)

noun use (aptly language-related): And the Hebrew – she didn’t even enjoy reading in her own language, much less struggling to decode the strange black squiggles that Mordechai was always trying to get her to remember.
– Geraldine Brooks, People of the Book

verb use (ellipses omitted): [Wal-mart founder Sam] Walton added the practice of leading his own company cheer. “Gimme a W!” he’d shout. “W!” the workers would shout back, and on through the Wal-Mart name. At the hyphen, Walton would shout “Gimme a squiggly!” and squat and twist his hips at the same time; the workers would squiggle right back.
– Bob Ortega, In Sam We Trust [slightly different etymology here? <wink> ]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: wordcrafter,

Odd. I wonder why he descibed a hyphen as a sqiggle? It's a straight line. Or did the company use the ~ instead in its logo (Wal~Mart rather than Wal-Mart)?

quote:

Or did the company use the ~ instead in its logo

It's a dash on each of the fourteen within a mile of my house.

Can the funny sound of a blend-word cause its meaning to change? When Lewis Carroll coined the word galumph, he apparently meant “to gallop in triumph”; "to prance about in a self-satisfied manner." But the word has a lumbering, clumsy sound, and perhaps that explains its newer meaning.

galumph – to move in a clumsy, ponderous, or noisy manner [in 1st quote, a noun]

the newer sense:
But, while you could never call her nimble, she chased around the [tennis] court with an energetic galumph …
– Telegraph, June 25, 2008

Half a hundred elephants galumph around the ring and take a bow in unison.
– Time Magazine, Apr. 21, 1941

the older sense; still in use:
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
– Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky (1872)

The Triumphal Galumph of Dr. Seuss
– Washington Post (headline), Sept. 26, 1991

“He’s a blithering idiot!”

I’d long known the phrase, and had thought that the “blithering” was just a word to add emphasis, just like saying, “He’s a f_cking idiot!” Not so. To blither has a very specific and useful meaning, and is completely apt in that phrase.

blither – to make long and rambling talk, without sense; to blather (noun: such talk)

Some dictionaries it’s from Old Norse; some say from Scots, and some suggest a blending of blather and dither. But does it mean “too much talk” [blathering] or “too much talk and not enough action” [dithering]? All the dictionaries say the former, and they are probably right, but a few quotes include a sense of dithering. Here’s one.

… we stagger and blither our way toward the inevitable decision about Iran.
– National Review, Our Blithering World: Where’s the vision and leadership?, Feb.1, 2007

mocktail – [mock + cocktail] a cocktail with no alcohol

Ya Ya moved into a sparking new high-rise development. No one in Raleigh lived in a high-rise, and we found ourselves briefly captivated by the glamour. One by one, took our turns standing at the darkened window swirling a mocktail and pretending to be mesmerized by the glittering lights of North Hills.
– David Sedaris, Naked (ellipses omitted)

cyborg – [cyber- + organism] a person [or animal] whose physical abilities are extended beyond normal limitations, [or are controlled,] by elements implanted into the body

The dictionary definitions are a bit more narrow. I added the bracketed words, based on quotes such as this one.

The next time a moth alights on your window sill, it could actually be a spy - one of a new generation of cyborg insects with implants wired into their nerves to allow remote control of their movement. Researchers have already developed remote control systems for rats, pigeons and even sharks. Furthermore, animals' sensory abilities far outstrip the vast majority of artificial sensors. And if you can hide your control system within your cyborg’s body, it would be virtually indistinguishable from its unadulterated kin - the perfect spy.
– New Scientist, March 6, 2008 (ellipses omitted)

You sure hear a lot about staycations these days.

You won’t find this word much in the published press, but I gather it’s well-known, throughout the US, among those who attended college within the last decade.

sexile – to banish one’s roommate from the dorm room, so that one have privacy there for sex with one's partner

She explained to him that she couldn't sexile her roommate for a second night in a row …
– Laura Sessions Stepp, Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both