Compounds with interest

Courtesy of Mrs. SC, an article on pollution from Mt. St. Helens in Washington. The linguistically interesting bit:

Italy's Mount Etna can produce 100 times more sulfur dioxide than Mount St. Helens — and sits in the middle of a heavily populated area. The volcano spawns acid rain and a type of bluish smog that volcanologists call vog, which can affect large swaths of Europe, said Terry Gerlach, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist who studies volcanic gases.

Since Mrs. SC already took the trouble to unpack the derivation, I'll quote her:

Apparently, vog = volcano + smog. As you and I both know, smog = smoke + fog. => vog = volcano + (smoke + fog)

That's about right, and raises the question of how many times you can iterate this sort of process before the derivation becomes hopelessly opaque. "vog" could just as easily be derived from "volcano + fog", but fog isn't really scary enough to get a new word on its own, regardless of the source (not that fog could come from a volcano anyway). It has to be poisonous!

So what else might we compound into an existing compound? Could fast-food signmakers save a few letters by combining "bacon cheeseburger" into "beeseburger"? Perhaps editorial writers could stitch together the derisive uses of "pollyanna" and "Mickey Mouse" into "pollymouse"? Maybe the good folks at Louisville Slugger will decide that instead of "baseball bats", they can now sell us "basebats". Yikes! SC is all for new words, but every now and then, maybe it's a good idea to step back and enjoy the ones we've got.

Comments

[polyglot conspiracy]

I think we should call this a "dortmanteau" = "double portmanteau."
"glog" = "great blog"
"dechortle" = "deep chortle"
"bootyliciass" = "bootylicious ass" (though that seems redundant)
"plaspork" = "plastic spork"
"foped" = "fast moped"
"fauxped" = "faux moped"
"scelevangelist" = "scary televangelist"
"tweengst" = "tween angst"
"motelper" = "motel helper"
"binfotainment" = "bad infotainment"
"tramedy" = "tragic dramedy"

[polyglot conspiracy]

(That was, sadly, the most fun I've had all week.)

[Radagast]

It's a bit unclear whether you think that vog itself falls into the ridiculous compound word category or not. I get the impression that you do, which motivates the following.

I'd argue that vog falls squarely into the "quite sane" word category, since it is a) short and easy to say/remember and b) refers to a specific portion of the world that is not easily referred to by any other preexisting word/phrase. I guess the phrase "regularly occurring pollution from the volcano" works in place of vog, but even that is still rather vague (Is it ash? Is it lava? Is it hot air? Is it sulfur dioxide? Is it some mix of those? Is it something else?). Thus coining the compound word vog allows residents/volcanologists of the region to specifically describe a condition familiar to them in a single, short word that they can all understand.

And does it really matter if the derivation is "hopelessly opaque," as long as people know what you mean when you say the word?

[Name]

The night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That's pride f*cking with you. F*ck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps.
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