A portmanteau is the result of linguistic liaison: two words come together and create a single offspring that combines the meanings of both parents. One of the stars of today’s vibrant animation from Christian Borstlap is the ‘cronut’—for those not too busy queuing for one at Dominique Ansel’s New York bakery, the cronut is a ‘croissant’ and a ‘donut’. While it’s not quite a genetically modified ‘Frankenfood’ (‘Frankenstein’ and ‘food’), the cronut still has the feel of something devised amid steam and Bunsen burners, while lightning splits the sky. The word portmanteau was first used in its modern sense in Lewis Carroll’s 1871 novel Through the Looking Glass; the term itself derives from a French portmanteau, combining porter, to carry, and manteau, cloak. When Carroll came upon it, it meant a suitcase with two compartments; he reinvented it so it would apply to the textual process itself—“two meanings packed up into one word,” Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice. Carroll invented the portmanteau ‘galumph’ (a blend of ‘gallop’ and ‘triumph); ‘chuckle’ and ‘snort’ gave birth to ‘chortle.’ The fashion that he inspired produced ‘electrocute’ (‘electricity’ and ‘execute’) and ‘prissy’ (‘prim’ and ‘sissy’). Yet portmanteaux reach their pinnacle when they exist away from the page, appearing before your very eyes in the form of crossbred animals. ‘Liger’ is of course a lion and tiger cross. ‘Wholphin’ is a whale and a dolphin—though just saying wholphin out loud induces the feeling that we passed through the looking glass somewhere near the last bus stop.