In
morphology (of the
linguistic variety), a blend is a
word formation process created by combining part of one
word with part or whole of another.
Most typically, a blend will take the first part of the first word and the last part of the last word, as in:
infotainment:
information + enter
tainment
brunch:
breakfast + l
unch
smog:
smoke + f
og
However, there are other ways blends are formed, such as:
TriBeCa:
Triangle +
Below +
Canal (Street)
hazmat:
hazardous +
materials
Fortran:
Formula +
Translator
Sometimes a blend will contain an entire word; only one of the words needs to be in partial form for a word to be considered a blend:
rebar:
reinforced steel +
bar
cranapple:
cranberry +
apple
However,
spelling conventions (which are notoriously
arbitrary and misleading in
English) sometimes leads people to falsely believe that certain words are blends (e.g.
weblog {web + log}). However, because no word appears only in partial form, these are actually
compounds.