Word: portmanteau
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...significant drop in the coverage of blue-blooded polo players and yacht skippers; such new categories as arrests, court cases and resignations have been added. The column's length, however, has remained about the same, as have the extreme compression of the form and the sometimes ingenious portmanteau descriptives. Dinah Shore was once referred to as a "scorch singer," Silent Film Comic Harry Langdon as a "deadpantomimer," and Mickey Rooney as a "Hardy family perennial." No longer in use are the TIME-coined neologisms that once peppered the section, such as "socialite," "tennist" (tennis player) and the myriad variations...
...more is more. In Sauce for the Goose, subplots sprout out of subplots. He even deploys amnesia in one story line, forgetting just why the line began in the first place. No pratfall is beneath him. His pun can still be mightier than his word, and he delights in portmanteau items, as in the case of the little band of fundamentalists who obstinately refuse to cut their "umbibli-cal" cord. But at times his verbal games can become so outrageous that you can't see de words for De Vries...
...gave some cues to Gauguin, as did the formal outlining of Japanese cloisonne enamel: that bluish bounding line was the diametric opposite of impressionist blur and pulsation. The swirling abstract patterns it the background of Paul Signac's portrait of Critic Félix Fénéon?with its long portmanteau title, Against the Enamel of a Background Rhythmic with Beats and Angles, Tones and Colors, Portrait ofM. Félix Fénéon in 1890?may have begun as a tiny detail of a kimono design in a Japanese print...