Scrudle, which rhymes with strudel and is a mixture of the words scraper and ladle, was the brainchild of Margaret O'Callaghan.
Described as a cross between a scraper, a scoop and a ladle (hence its name, a hybrid of the three), the Scrudle was invented by middle class housewife Margaret O'Callaghan, 65, at her suburban home.
"Panamax" ships are of the maximum dimensions that will fit through the locks of the Panama Canal. This size is determined by the dimensions of the lock chambers, and the depth of the water in the canal. An increasing number of ships are built precisely to the Panamax limit, in order to transport the maximum amount of cargo in a single vessel.
Ha ha, your Twitter of 'blikey' reminded me of a derogatory term we'd use when younger... 'gikey' or 'gykey' (never wrote it down, just verbal) which was a portmanteau of 'gypsy' and 'pikey'!
Is it a bus? Is it a train? Er, yes, it's a train
How did a clutch of arty female electro acts end up being tipped as the future of pop? Blame Scouting For Girls, the Pigeon Detectives and the slow death of indentikit guitar music
About forty police forces in this country are now testing an American device called an ‘Identi-Kit’, which is used to translate witnesses' descriptions of a person into visual terms.
Yes, this post would have been more timely had I written it in the run up to the US election, but better late than never.The unprecedented enthusiasm and depth of grassroots support that some believe Barack Obama’s candidacy has generated
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.
The marriage of the pair sees the combination of expertise in several specialist areas, creating a superbank, or "Bankenstein", as one analyst put it.
Anyone for seconds?
Following JD's reference to portmanteau words, here are a couple I encountered last night.
The American Dialect Society recently chose 'subprime' as their word of the year, and on a similar note I think 'stagflation' is a word we'll be hearing more of in the next 12 months.
Alarming signs have recently gone up in our office informing us of the procedures we need to follow in the event of an Invacuation.
An Invacuation – presumably the unloved offspring of the words "evacuation"and, erm, "in" – apparently involves workers sheltering within their office building rather than being kicked out onto the streets to fend for themselves. In our state-of-the-art Canary Wharf tower, that basically means hiding in the stairwells until it's safe to come out again, and is designed principally as the process to be followed in the event of a terrorist attack. None of this, sadly, is clear from the signs, which seem to have led to general confusion.
This raises two points. Firstly, I don't care what you've called your new emergency procedure: if someone attacks my workplace then I want to get as far away from there as possible, not huddle in a stairwell. Secondly, how safe can an emergency procedure be if you've given it a name that ensures no-one knows what it means?
Recently I keep catching news stories about 'globesity', the growing problem of obesity across the globe (yes, the word is yet another portmanteau). Michael Quinlon's World Wide Words has some good info about the origins of the term 'globesity' so I won't go into too much detail.
