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You are here: Home / Expand Your Vocabulary / What’s a ‘frenemy’? New portmanteau words in the media

What’s a ‘frenemy’? New portmanteau words in the media

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Young woman reading daily newspaper
Reading newspaper from Crestock Images

“Portma-what?!”, I hear you say. English is such a rich and evolving language that you never know when you’ll discover something new.

Yesterday I was going through the Canadian newspaper, the Globe and Mail, when I saw a headline in the family and relationships section:

“My girlfriend won’t stand up to her frenemy”

A reader had written to the newspaper with a problem. Can you guess what happened, and can you guess what ‘frenemy’ means?

First, if you don’t know what ‘to stand up to someone’ means, we use this phrasal verb when we want to defend ourselves or an idea which we believe in. Often we stand up to someone when we feel that we are being treated unfairly or badly, when someone is not being respectful to us or our ideas.

Standing up for yourself involves the idea that you believe in yourself.

For example:

After being insulted by her classmates, Katka decided to stand up for herself.

Back to ‘frenemy‘. This is an example of a portmanteau word,  a mixture of two separate words coming together to create a new word with a unique meaning. In this case ‘friend’ blends with ‘enemy’ to create ‘frenemy.’ When the Globe and Mail reader writes about his girlfriend and says she ‘won’t stand up to her frenemy’,  we instantly get the picture that she has a friend who isn’t good or respectful to her.

Frenemies are people who really aren’t our friends, just as you can see in this video (or click here if you can’t see it on your browser):


How To Spot Frenemies on Howcast

This is why it can be fascinating to read the latest magazines and newspapers, as you’re sure to find some new vocabulary and interesting uses of English. Of course the question this brings for publishers of dictionaries and coursebooks is whether or not these words will last or whether they will simply fade out of fashion.

What other portmanteau words do you know?

I’m sure you’ve heard of ‘brunch’, a combination of ‘breakfast’ and ‘lunch’. There’s also ‘fanzine’ (fan + magazine), ‘blog’ (web + log), and ’emoticon’ (emotion + icon).

Another portmanteau word which you see in the media (but I’ve not yet heard from the lips of a friend) is ‘bromance.’ which describes a close platonic relationship between two men. There’s even a TV series called ‘Bromance’ on MTV!

Now that you know two separate words can blend together to form a portmanteau word, try to find out and google what these mean, and which two words they originally came from (and if you’re not sure of the answer, just ask me below):

Czenglish, webzine, netiquette, docutainment, rockumentary, mockumentary

 

malware, guesstimate, infomercial, televangelist, sexpert, sexting, smog

mompreneur, wi-fi, sitcom, Obamacare

And what about these..?

Brangelina

Billary

Finally, for trivia buffs:

Which words come together to make ‘goodbye’?

 

Further reading

  • Read all about the ‘frenemy’ Globe and Mail article here: My girlfriend won’t stand up to her frenemy
  • The Top 10 Bromance films

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Rudolf Rosa says

    February 19, 2011 at 22:33

    http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/goodbye
    I wouldn’t have guessed that. Nice article, thanks!

    Reply
    • David Sweetnam says

      February 19, 2011 at 23:31

      Thanks for the link Rudolf.

      Now see if you can guess where ‘fortnight’ comes from 🙂

      Reply
  2. Rudolf Rosa says

    February 20, 2011 at 15:52

    That was kinda easier 😉 When I was checking that I guessed correctly, I came across the word “sennight”. I wonder if anyone actually uses that one…
    But do you know what a microfortnight is?

    Reply
    • David Sweetnam says

      February 20, 2011 at 18:39

      Hi Rudolf

      Wow, I’d never heard of ‘sennight’ nor ‘microfortnight’!

      [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/microfortnight]

      For people who’ve been around Václavské náměstí here in Prague on a Friday or Saturday evening, you have probably seen a hen night in action:

      [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelorette_party]

      ‘Hen night’ is still written as two separate words though, who knows, maybe soon we’ll put these together like we have for so many others.

      Reply
      • David Sweetnam says

        February 21, 2011 at 21:38

        I just found this site, which seems quite interesting. You type in the word and you get current examples of how it’s used:

        http://www.wordnik.com/words/frenemy

        Reply
        • David Sweetnam says

          February 23, 2011 at 20:43

          When news isn’t news

          I just came across a new term. It’s not a word but a new website which is called ‘churnalism’ – bring together the words ‘churn’ and ‘journalism’.

          The idea is that some articles in the newspapers are taken directly from companies’ websites and press releases:

          http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/feb/23/churnalism-pr-media-trust

          http://churnalism.com/

          Reply
  3. maryam says

    August 15, 2014 at 09:43

    hello sir
    i see your site recently it is very nice and uesful.
    I am MA student in university of Iran and looking for a THESIS about pallindrome in English language teaching. can you do me a favor and give me some articles about it, i need them please help me.
    i am appreciated in advance.

    Reply
  4. David Sweetnam says

    August 15, 2014 at 19:19

    Hi Maryam

    Thanks for checking out this site. Unfortunately there’s not much I can offer regarding your academic research, as this is more a general blog with tips on spoken English, phrasal verbs, idioms, and so on. Google should definitely help you and the various academic journals you’ll no doubt find. Good luck,

    David

    ps for those interested, palindrome words are defined here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palindrome

    Reply

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Welcome to Get Into English. I’m David, an English teacher, traveller & language enthusiast from Melbourne Australia.
That’s me above in Bendigo, Victoria before Corona came!
I write articles on learning English especially for people wishing to live in or travel to Australia, and for those who are interested in business and all kinds of issues!

Older posts were written while I was in Europe, newer ones are from Australia.

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