"porter" (carries) and "manteau" (cloak), a portmanteau is a type of luggage (in my parent's generation it meant schoolbag here, but got shortened to just "port" because that's what Australians do to language).
Lewis Carroll coined the use of the word as meaning sticking two words together. So portmanteau was a portmanteau before portmanteaus were portmanteaus :)
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Date: 2013-04-13 05:29 am (UTC)Lewis Carroll coined the use of the word as meaning sticking two words together. So portmanteau was a portmanteau before portmanteaus were portmanteaus :)