Tag Archives: P

pseudonym

Definition | Meaning

  1. A false name adopted to protect a trade secret, and, not coincidentally, to arouse the interest of the target market.

Example | Illustration

  • Ginger was the pseudonym of the Segway human transporter

Etymology | Origin

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  • code name

portmanteau word

Definition | Meaning

  1. Any word or brand name created by the whimsical blending of two or more other words, as found in the works of Lewis Carroll.

Example | Illustration

  • Snapple, a portmanteau of the English words ‘snap’ and ‘apple’

Etymology | Origin

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  • blend

polysemy

Definition | Meaning

  1. The proliferation of words sharing a single, ancestral root.

Example | Illustration

  • the English words ‘aggregate’, ‘congregate’, ‘egregious’, ‘gregarious’, and ‘segregate’ are all derived from the Latin root greg- ‘to flock, to herd’

Etymology | Origin

polyonomy

Definition | Meaning

  1. The use of multiple names for the same company, product, or service.
  2. The use of several words to create one brand name.

Example | Illustration

Etymology | Origin

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  • poecilonymy

poecilonymy

Definition | Meaning

  1. The use of multiple names for the same company, product, or service.
  2. The use of several words to create one brand name.

Example | Illustration

Etymology | Origin

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  • polyonomy

phonestheme

Definition | Meaning

  1. A consonant cluster apparently associated with a particular semantic field, but with no distinguishable independent meaning.

Example | Illustration

  • ‘gl-’
  • ‘sn-’
  • ‘sl-’

Etymology | Origin

phoneme

Definition | Meaning

  1. A meaningful sound, the smallest unit of speech which distinguishes one word from another in a given language.

Example | Illustration

  • in the pair of words ‘bat’ and ‘mat’, the distinguishing sounds /b/ and /m/ are both phonemes

Etymology | Origin