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Advertisers love to mash up language

Say you're chilaxing on your staycation. Or perhaps you're crafting a plan to be the next big mompreneur.

Well, Jergen's lotion wants you to stage a skintervention on a friend with damaged skin. And Target wants to recruit frugalistas to come save money, yet look fabulous.

Yes, American marketers have fallen in love with mashing together word parts into new creations, what we'll hereby christen "frankenwords." Hoping the novelty will worm its way into the public consciousness, the American landscape has become flooded with nutrageous peanuts, bromances and Panormous-sized Pizza Hut pizzas.

"We're dealing with such an odd moment in society, with so many cross-currents and changes, that we've lost some ability to describe them," said Kate Newlin, a New York brand consultant and author. Hence, when we struggle with scary phenomenon like the economy or youth sexuality, we find relief in terms that define them with humor: staycations, sexting, and tweens, to offer a few examples.

Companies, always hunting for profit opportunities in pop consciousness, are jumping into the fray.

As the candy maker Snickers implores via billboards, "Operate some heavy feedquipment, and put your hunger in a nougaplex."

Currently, "staycation" reigns as the Godfather of made up words, Newlin said.

Though its origin is debatable, a sports columnist at The Myrtle Beach Sun-News may have coined the term in July 2003, describing his nine-day stay at home to watch sports.

Once the economy fizzled and people couldn't afford to vacate beyond home, staycation became iron-clad slang. Corporate marketers sensed a moment to act.

Snickers went whole hog with the fad, with commercials showing mock basketball star "Patrick Chewing," and a Facebook page for people to post their own candy-related words; "Predict the future with Nougadamus," says one poster. Another says "Obey the 10 Chewmandments!"

A special category exists of one-time-use frankenwords. Newlin puts Pizza Hut's Panormous-sized pizza in this genre. "That's funny in a this-week’s-promotion-for-a-pizza kind of way," she said.

The most potent commercial examples don't rely on the suffix or prefix crutch. They combine full or nearly full words into a single punch line, the corporate version of the Labradoodle.

MTV christened a fantastic example, Newlin said, with its reality show "Bromance," where men compete for friendship of the show's star. "It takes a pretty conventional idea, best friendship among men, and quasi-sexualizes it, gives it some edge," Newlin says. "A frisson of the verboten."

Anyone needing a new word can now avail themselves of many online tools. Unwords.com catalogs thousands of made up words, itself an example of what's called "crowdsourcing," in the technology marketplace - soliciting public contributions to a body of work.

Some examples: Plothole, a moment during a movie when the drama hits an implausible turn. And flabbygast, the sudden realization that one's dieting remains ineffective.

Wordspy.com attempts to define and trace the origin of terms like localvore, one who only eats locally produced food, and rightsizing, a corporate term for firing workers.

The occasionally vulgar Web site UrbanDictionary.com lists even more crowdsourced words, like:

Inbredneck — people in rural areas with suspect genealogy.

Swineflucation — the break from work or school due to swine flu.

Dudevorce — the breakup of a bromance.

At first, such concoctions might seem anathema to grammar mavens. Wrong.

They fascinate lexicon aficionados like Mignon Fogarty, better known online as the "Grammar Girl," and author of grammar handbooks. Frankenwords are formally called "Neologisms," which inhabit an intriguing netherworld between slang and "standard usage."

"People like us dig a lot into the history of words, and we recognize how much language has changed," Fogarty said.
Modern use provides a bounty of fun experiments, called "portmanteaus," she says. That's the formal term for words made up from combination of sounds from other words.

Classic example: spork.

"Although," Fogarty warns, "in certain instances, we can find certain examples annoying."

Verizon marketers tried to launch the term enterstayment in December 2008 to describe the act of saving money by staying home, entertained by Verizon's cable and Internet offerings.

Newlin gives that term low marks. "That's the kind of thing that only makes sense around a cubicle," Newlin says. "I could see doing a whole episode of 'The Office' on that."

Jergen's lotion also went too far, she says, when it started a mock online campaign asking people to stage skinterventions on friends who use tanning beds too much.

Simply being a mouthful can doom a frankenword. At a recent industry conference, the word philanthropreneur came up, said Dana Wood, a fashion editor and columnist for "W" magazine. Though it attempts to describe the nascent idea of a business-conscious person involved in charity, the word "is an example of trying too hard."

It's not that Wood abhors frankenwords. In fact, fashion often leads the way in brand culture. In her recent column at "W" she cataloged names of fashion lines that go beyond made-up words into the realm of the indecipherable.

"It's become nearly impossible to glean a label's MO from its name," she wrote. Hence, "Helmet of the Will," "Opening Ceremony," "Black Sheep & Prodigal Sons," and "Dirty Librarian Chains." (The last is a line of fashion necklaces.)

And her upcoming book on makeovers for moms nearing middle age will be titled "Momover."

Of course, corporate branding projects ultimately aim to generate revenue.

And therein lies a danger for anyone minting fresh words. Frankenwords are tailor made for trademarking, as they are novel and creative.

Viacom Inc. owns Bromance. Target Stores Inc. owns Frugalista and protects the term to the degree that corporate officials decline to discuss its genesis for "legal, proprietary reasons."

Magazine company Conde Nast owns the Momover term that Wood will use (with permission) for her upcoming book. So anyone looking to employ that term in commercial ventures should prepare to send a check to New York.