1010. We'd never be accused of belling the cat, but we did let our curiosity get the best of us when sniffing around common cat-related idioms. Plus, little did we know that we're already in Augtober and Summerween! Grab a pumpkin-spiced treat and come on an adventure through the looking glass to learn about portmanteau words.
1010. We'd never be accused of belling the cat, but we did let our curiosity get the best of us when sniffing around common cat-related idioms. Plus, little did we know that we're already in Augtober and Summerween! Grab a pumpkin-spiced treat and come on an adventure through the looking glass to learn about portmanteau words.
The "cat idoims" segment is written by Susan K. Herman, a former multidisciplined linguist, editor, and instructor for the U.S. government.
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Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff. Today, we're going to talk about idioms the cat dragged in and portmanteau words like "summerween" and "brunch."
by Susan K. Herman
In episode 976, we talked about "pet speak," the online language we use to talk about – and for – our furry friends. We explored the "cativerse" and how cats have seemingly taken over the Internet. Well, today we're going to delve into how the word "cat" has slinked its way into many English idioms – much like our beloved floofs have slinked their way in our hearts.
But first, let's take a brief look at the origins of the word "cat," and how these critters became such a huge part of our lives. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, "cat" comes from the Latin "cattus," which first appeared in Europe in 75 C.E. (Common Era, or A.D.). Talk about ancient history! It was extended to big cats – lions and tigers and leopards, oh my! – around 1700. A related word, "feline," from the Latin "feles," was first used as an adjective meaning "cat-like" in the 1680s. Around 1861, it came to be used as a noun meaning "feline animal" or "domestic cat" in popular language.
So how and when did cats become so ingrained in our society and in our language? Well, it is true, as you may have heard, that Egyptians were responsible for cats' widespread domestication around 2,900 years ago. In fact, the cat was the official deity of Egypt. However, according to a "Scientific American" article by researcher Carlos Driscoll and his colleagues, research shows that cats may have lived among humans way before that. In 2004, researchers at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris discovered a man buried with a cat on the island of Cyprus, suggesting that people had a "special, intentional relationship with cats nearly10,000 years ago." DNA research of the species, felis silvestris, published by Driscoll in 2007 confirms this theory.
The statistics portal "Statista" reports that, in 2023, there were about 47 million U.S. households with overlords – oops, I mean cats. It seems they have taken over, so it's no wonder there are so many cat-related idioms. We can't discuss all of them
here, but let's look at some of those that are more common or interesting.
First, there are several that are based on cats' normal characteristics and behaviors. Any of us who have lived with cats know they are stealthy, sneaky, curious, and well, mischievous. And they are notoriously lazy, most choosing to sleep and eat their lives away. Some of these more obvious idioms include:
Now for some of the less obvious ones:
So there you have it. We've "let the cat out of the bag" on some of our favorite idioms. The cat definitely didn't "get our tongue" this time.
That segment was written by Susan K. Herman, retired multidisciplined language analyst, editor, and instructor for the federal government.
By Mignon Fogarty
U.S. retailers have been ignoring the weather and rolling out their Halloween wares. This year, spooky season began in July. The portmanteau word being used to describe this earlier-than-ever trend is "summerween": "summer" plus "Halloween." The name seems to go back to at least 2012 when the animated TV show called "Gravity Falls" had an episode called "Summerween" in which locals decided they wanted to celebrate Halloween twice a year.
Portmanteau words, also known as blends, do just that — blend words. You can blend all of one word with a part of another, like "summerween," or you can blend just parts of two words, as in "Augtober," another portmanteau used to describe the "fall shopping now starts in summer" trend. I just saw this blend of "August" and "October" in an article touting that pumpkin spice season is also upon us. Starbucks launched its Pumpkin Spice Latte August 22 this year, the earliest date ever.
The difference between portmanteau words and compound words is that compound words blend two whole words together, like "backpack," "bookcase," and "teapot."
The name, "portmanteau," is itself a French blend word. It originally referred to a type of suitcase with two parts, but it took on the new linguistic meaning in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass."
In the book, Humpty Dumpty explains what some of the invented words in the poem "Jabberwocky" mean. For example, he says, "'Slithy' means ‘lithe and slimy.’" And then he goes on to explain how these words were made by blending other words together by invoking the name of the suitcase. He says, “You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”
Other portmanteaus I've liked over the years include "spellebrity" to describe people who are famous in the spelling bee world, and "glamping" to describe upscale glamorous camping, where you might have an actual bed in a fancy tent and access to meals prepared by a personal chef.
You might remember my piece about the evolution of words for colors and how linguists use the word "grue" to refer to the early color that included both green and blue in many civilizations. And if you were alive and an adult in 2010, you probably remember snowmageddon, a massive East Coast snow storm that made everyone think of Armageddon.
Blends have made multiple appearances in the American Dialect Society word-of-the-year competitions.
Copium, a blend of "cope" and "opium," was a nominee for most creative word of the year in 2021, which the American Dialect society defined as "the rationalizations, justifications, and denial one uses to deal with a severe letdown or personal failure." And a candidate for least likely to succeed in 2012 was "meggings," a blend of "male leggings." I'd say they hit the mark on that one. But one of the two winners in that category was "YOLO" for "you only live once," and I still hear that all the time. A Google Ngram search has "YOLO" taking off around 2009, with usage going straight up ever since. So pour one out for "meggings," which probably grumbles "YOLO" to itself every once in a while.
The word "humblebrag" won the most useful category in 2011, and that one is certainly still with us. That's a compound word though, instead of a portmanteau, since it puts two full words together: "humble" and "brag."
In late July, I posted on Bluesky that the word "vibes" is making a strong play for word of the year with blends like "vibesession" and "vibeflation" combining "vibes" with "recession" and "inflation" to represent that people are down about the economy even though the economic data doesn't support it. And the origin of the word "vibes" even has a weak portmanteau connection.
So people started using "vibes" as a short form of "vibraphone" in 1940, which is a musical instrument that's similar to a xylophone except its bars are made out of metal instead of wood. The OED has this line from the Encyclopedia Yearbook of Jazz in 1957 for example: "Adrian Rollini, known earlier as a bass saxophonist, had been concentrating on vibes since the early 1930s." And then in 1967, people started using it the way we do today to describe feelings, as in "The vibes have changed." Citations in the OED include "We're not getting the right vibes," and this one that made me laugh from a London magazine called "New Musical Express" in 1976: "I remember when I first saw The Grateful Dead... I didn't like them much but I felt that same vibe— something is happening." Sadly, I couldn't find the original, so I can't tell you who said it. Hundreds of editions of the magazine are actually scanned and online, but as far as I could tell, not the one that contained this story.
So is "vibraphone" a portmanteau? Probably not. The first part does come from "vibration," but believe it or not, "phone" isn't considered a standalone word in the sense of making blends because it's what the OED calls a "combining form." It's just an ending, borrowed from Greek, that gets added on to a lot of other things: "gramophone," megaphone," "microphone," "saxophone," and "telephone," which is the word we've shortened to just "phone" to use when we talk about the devices we now use to surf the internet and rarely use to actually talk to people voice-to-voice.
So as Augtober winds down and Thanksgiving is on the horizon, it's probably not too soon to be thinking about turducken and tofurkey.
Finally, I have a familect story from David.
Hey, Grammar Girl. It's David from Berkeley. I've got two quick familects for you.
My brother years ago decided to differentiate between three tongued forks and four. He would call one a fork that had four tines. He'd call it a "fork," but one with three, he would call it a "threek." So we've used that forever and ever.
And then the other story I've got for you is just the other day, I overheard a little girl and her dad, and the little girl was pointing at stores, and she said there's the bakery, and there's the bankery. So I think I'm gonna be teaching my grandchildren to call it the "bankery."
Love the show. Thanks a lot. Bye.
Thanks so much, David! Those both made me laugh out loud.
If you have a familect story to share, I'd love to hear it, and now you can send me a voice memo using the chat feature in WhatsApp. The link is in the show notes, and be sure to tell me the story behind your familect and record your message in a nice quiet place.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to Holly Hutchings in digital operations, Morgan Christianson in advertising, Brannan Goetschius, director of podcasts; Dan Feierabend in audio; and Davina Tomlin in marketing, who just got back from a week of seeing beautiful rocks, waterfalls, and caves in Oregon.
And I'm Mignon Fogarty. That's all. Thanks for listening.