Every day, for centuries, a sane person can drink 3 or 4 bottles of cola. How is that possible?
Colas, unlike other
soft drinks, trigger taste amnesia: if you like
coke at all, the day's fourth can tastes just as good as the first,
says Warren Buffet. At the same time and rate, you'll get sick of, say, iced tea or lemonade quickly.
With emails, too, a little variation now and then delights. How about a cola theme?
›› This stationery is softer than the softest drink. Cheers! (Outlook, Outlook Express)
"You see," says
Humpty Dumpty, "it's like a portmanteau — there are two meanings packed up into one word."
It, of course, is "slithy", a term in the poem
Jabberwocky, which
Alice asked Humpty to explain. Thus
Lewis Carroll coined
portmanteau word for a blend — a word made up of other words, or word fragments. Prominent portmanteau words are "
brunch" ("breakfast" plus "lunch"), "
pixel" ("picture" plus "element"), "
qubit" ("quantum" plus "bit") or "Microsoft" ("microcomputer" plus "software").
Incidentally, we'll encounter both "Microsoft" and the portmanteau way of coining words while securing our email password:
›› Secure your email account from hackers breaking into it with a strong password. Here's how to turn your favorite sentence into a complex password that defeats many an attack.