photo credit: Curtis Gregory Perry via photopin cc
Lately, I’ve been obsessed with the concept of a portmanteau—cramming two words into one word, like “breakfast” and “lunch” forming “brunch.” It’s one of those terms I’ve heard from time to time but always forgot the name of. Well, no more! I can’t stop thinking about them now.
Since I’ve started noticing portmanteaus, I keep finding them. Like, did you know Godzilla is a portmanteau, too? According to Wikipedia, “Gojira is a portmanteau of the Japanese words: gorira (“gorilla”), and kujira (“whale”).” Mental Floss informed me the other day that the candy Toblerone is a combination Tobler (the person who invented its last name) and “torrone,” meaning nougat in Italian.
Really though, to keep me from forgetting what a portmanteau is again, I needed a big, silly, funny portmanteau to make me remember it forever. Just in time for election season to be over, I present that Gerrymandering—the practice of adjusting the borders around voting districts to gain a political edge—is a portmanteau of the words “Gerry” and “salamander!” That’s because the first guy recognized for this act of politics was named Gerry and one of the voting districts he created looked like a salamander. We say “spork” instead of “combination of spoon and fork” and we say “Gerrymandering” instead of “Gerry’s Salamander.” I can’t forget that!
Oh, also, Gerrymandering is a big problem facing democracy in America.
