Meaning
"Portmanteau word" is used to describe a linguistic blend, namely "a word formed by blending sounds from two or more distinct words and combining their meanings." This definition overlaps with the grammatical term contraction, but a distinction can be made between a portmanteau and a contraction by noting that contractions are formed from words that would otherwise appear together in sequence, such as do and not, whereas a portmanteau word is typically formed by combining two or more existing words that all relate to a singular concept which the portmanteau word is meant to describe, such as Spanish and English, into Spanglish.
Portmanteaux should also be distinguished from compounds, which do not involve the truncation of parts of the stems of the words making them up. For instance, starfish is a compound, not a portmanteau, of star and fish (a hypothetical portmanteau of these words might be stish).
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