Damien Cave, “2005: In a Word” (New York Times, Dec. 25, 2005)
The viral mutant spawn of celebrity neologisms seems to have taken over. Why so many nicknames?
Linguists point to Washington. The capital has yielded a “Woodstein” (Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein), a “Ronbo” (Ronald Reagan and Rambo) and “Billary,” a nickname for the Clintons.
“It comes out of very political bickering,” said Benjamin Zimmer, a linguistic anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s the narcissism of small differences where there is a need to distinguish various political gradations with simplicity. One way to do it is to take two words and smash them together.”
Most political portmanteaus, as these lexical unions are formally known, are intended to insult, to diminish a subject with an association. In pop culture, the genesis seems to have been more playful. …
“Overexposure makes people react in strange ways,” Mr. Zimmer said. “Maybe that’s why you create a word that sounds like some kind of mutant four-legged beast.”
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