And now we have the 'hawkerpreneur'. Really?!
No real hawker has the time to pronounce that word; it is too long, consonantal, and unwieldy. And how does it even make sense, what do you think hawkers do all the time?
ONE minute I'm ranting on Facebook about the word "hawkerpreneur". The next minute I'm wranting in the pages of The Business Times. Is there such a word as "wrante"? I don't see why there can't be if we are already clownking around with words like "hawkerpreneur"!
Look, I get portmanteaus. I can't be calling myself a Singlish-loving poet (or a singlet), which I am, if I disapprove of creating clever new words. A portmanteau does this by brazenly kneading together the sounds and meanings of two innocent words.
The original portmanteau is a leather suitcase that opens into two equal compartments. But its word is a portmanteau since porter, in French, means carry and manteau mantle. These days, we also sometimes hear the word "frankenword" - which is another portmanteau for, well, portmanteau.
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