Bad Portmanteau Examples

Tuppermoat

The best word I think I came up with was “Tuppermoat”—a name for the water that collects in the rim of Tupperware in the dishwasher—but the Clorox people didn’t want to touch it because of the potential trademark problem. I’m sure Chris would also point out that “Tuppermoat” isn’t a portmanteau because the words aren’t blended. I just substituted “moat” for “ware,” but I was getting desperate.

Cat-o-Mat

I submitted another five or six words, and finally the Clorox people settled on “cat-o-mat”—also not a portmanteau, but a word that describes the layer of cat hair that you can never seem to get off furniture. I don’t see it on the Ick-tionary site though, so maybe they’re going to add it later or maybe the just said they’d picked it to humor me and make me stop submitting new words.

The Ick-tionary

It’s a fun site with cute art, and they do have some great words in the final selections. I think my favorite is “board-‘oeuvres,” a word to describe the crumbs you find on your keyboard. 

Many thanks to Chris Johnson, The Name Inspector and author of the great book Microstyle for taking the time to weigh in on my failures.

In case it wasn’t clear enough at the beginning, here’s some formal legal language: I am being compensated by The Clorox® Company to share a new language about messes for the Clorox® Ick-tionary.

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