portmanteau: n. a word formed by merging the sounds and meanings of two different words, as chortle, from chuckle and snort
The best ones like "liberaltarian" are succinct, clever bons mots. Then you have ones like "listicle," which has less to do with wit than it does with smashing two words together. Hell, it's not even clear which two words have been smashed together; it sounds more like "list" + "testicle" than "list" + "article."
But they all get used so much that they immediately become cliché. Like a joke told too many times, they lose any cleverness they may have once possessed. So unless you've just come up with a good one, just save it for the Colbert Report, everybody.
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