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Portmanteau (Travelling Case)A portmanteau (from 16th century French, plural portmanteaux) is a large travelling case made of leather. Originally designed to carry (porter) your coats (mantles), the portmanteau stands on end, so that the coats are hung vertically, and opens up like a book to make a pair of mini-closets joined by hinges. (see Oxford Shorter English dictionary.) Other words constructed this way are considered "portmanteau" in the linguistic sense of the word; this may be a metaphor for the way two words are joined (evoked by the image of closets hinged together), but its construction also makes use of metonymy, since the name of the class is also an example of what it denotes.
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