Portmanteaus are words that are made up of parts of other words and contain their shared meaning. For example, a utensil that is part fork and part spoon is called a spork.
Portmanteaus are similar to compound nouns, where two nouns are put together to express an new idea, like ice + cream is ice cream. The difference is that compound nouns contain both complete words, where as in a portmanteau, at least one of the words is incomplete.
1.) Read over the following portmanteaus.
2.) Guess their definitions and add the words that you think relate to them.
3.) What two words to you think each portmanteau is made up of?
Can you invent your own portmanteau?
Think of two concepts that are related, and play with combinations of words related to each.
If you are stuck for a combination that works, you can try out this Portmanteau Generator.