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Examples
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The comic in which it appeared - self-described as a "webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language," and beloved by Web geeks - showed the word malamanteau as the subject of a Wikipedia page, with the caption: "Ever notice how Wikipedia has a few words it really likes?"
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On May 12, the word malamanteau showed up in the Web comic xkcd, where it was defined as "a neologism for
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Why then the knee-jerk "not a real word" reaction of so many people to malamanteau?
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So when I saw malamanteau show up in the comic strip, the very first thing I did was head to Wordnik, the collaborative online dictionary that I run.
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For some, malamanteau will only become real when it's used, unconsciously, by someone who's never heard of xkcd.
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In a sterling example of life imitating art, a Wikipedia page for malamanteau was speedily created - and just as rapidly deleted for "not being a real word," but not before generating thousands of words of discussion as to its
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It's not the clearest definition ever written, but the idea is that a malamanteau blends one or more not-quite-right words to create a completely new one.
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True, for many English speakers, use in a Web comic and inclusion in a couple of online dictionaries are not enough to establish malamanteau as a "real" word.
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Since online dictionaries are effectively limitless in scope, it's not like malamanteau is taking up space that would be better used for other words.
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But if we leave the circumstances of its birth aside, malamanteau already has a number of the qualities we associate with real words.
rabbitwho commented on the word malamanteau
Malamanteau is a combination of two words: malapropism and portmanteau. It first gained notoriety in May of 2010 when it was mentioned in the popular web comic XKCD
Examples of malamanteau include:
"to misconscrew it up"
"to flustrate"
May 12, 2010
1131703760 commented on the word malamanteau
Malamanteau is itself a malamanteau :P
May 13, 2010
john commented on the word malamanteau
But not a mallomanteau.
May 13, 2010
utarcher commented on the word malamanteau
Discovered this word because of an XKCD comic to be found here.
May 14, 2010