Some Insights into portmanteau words in current fashion magazines
Some Insights into portmanteau words in current fashion magazines

Summary/Abstract: Lexical amalgamation (or crossing) is one of the word-making processes that currently contributes to the expansion of English language. It represents a minor but very distinctive word-making process containing elements of lexical composition and abbreviation. Because of the complexity of this word process, its definition and interpretations by linguists are very different. Part of the paper approximates the theoretical essence of the crossing of words and gives a synthesizing view of his understanding, as well as the principle features. In the empirical part, we examine the selected crosswords in the current fashion magazines ELLE. In the paper we analyze the structural typology of the crossword by the base, the lexical verbal type and the syntactic relation. The article is based on the hypothesis that most of the words analyzed, as a product of lexical amalgamation, "Fashion words." The frequency distribution of explored potential "fashion" crosswords is verified using the GloWbE. Lexical amalgamation is a productive word-making process that combines the tendency of English to economics of expression with infinite possibilities of lexical creativity, experimentation and playfulness, which in the 21st century shifts word-postmodernism to the sphere of combinatorics art.

• Details
• Contents