Gingerous – who in the past has asked us such questions as
'can you really have an all-day breakfast?' and
'how heavy is the Apple MacBook Air?' – has emailed us in the following:
In our flat we were frequently using the words 'chat' and 'banter' for similar situations and so to save time we created the portmanteau 'chanter'.
There is a Facebook group we created to try to promote it, just for a bit of fun and to prove to couple of friends that this new word could take off.
We are aware that there are other uses for the word 'chanter'; see the definitions at www.yourdictionary.com/chanter.
I'm not sure,
Gingerous, but I suspect that your 'chanter' has a slightly different pronunciation to
the other types of 'chanter', at least in our home counties accents.
I assume the first syllable of your 'chanter' rhymes with 'ant' (following 'banter'), whereas the first syllables of the other types of 'chanter' rhyme with 'aunt' – again, at least in our accents. In many other British accents, however, all those 'chanters' would be pronounced identically.
Actually, I don't know about the pronunciation of the chanter that is "that pipe of a bagpipe with finger holes on which the melody is played" as it's a new one on me. And is this where I should mention the
Great Vowel Shift?
My question to the floor is: have you coined a word and tried to get it into wider circulation?
