Port-man-toes Trivia Quiz

The picture that matches the portmanteau 'cosplay' is a cosine (cos) wave and the 'play' button on a recording device.

Ever felt like dressing up as your favourite character from a movie, book, TV series or video game? Then cosplay is for you! The word itself is a portmaneau of the words costume and play, and was first coined in 1984 by Nobuyuki Takahashi. However, cosplay has been around a lot longer that that - it was first recorded in 1939, where where fans dressed as characters from science fiction films at the World Science Fiction Convention in New York City. It came into its own as a phenomenon in the 1970s in Japan, where people dressed up as their pop culture heroes. It quickly spread to the USA and the rest of the world.

The pictorial rebus that matches with 'romcom' is a famous landmark in Rome (-e) plus a comb (-b) - romcom!

A romcom is a sub-genre of comedy and romance film (or play) that is characterised by how it deals with love in a light, humorous way. They were particularly popular in the 1930s-40s and often included the idea of an unequal match; a rich girl falling in love with a poor boy or vice versa. There is usually some adversity, too - a misunderstanding or jealous lover, or a separation due to work or war. But never fear! Romcoms always turn out happily!

In some places, the abbreviation for moustache is 'mo'. The matching picture for the answer 'motel' is a half moustache (mo) and a tel, which is a small mountain.

The term 'motel' is used somewhat less frequently now than it was in the 1900s, and derived from the combination of the words 'motor' and 'hotel'. First used in 1925, it was reported in a newspaper that the "Milestone Interstate Corporation ... proposes to build and operate a chain of motor hotels between San Diego and Seattle, the hotels to have the name 'Motel.'" Motels were very popular with families who were undertaking driving holidays as a cheap form of accommodation, but also with traveling salesmen and the like.

The picture matching the portmanteau word 'hangry' is a picture of a gibbet, for 'hang' and a ray, minus the letter 'a', which leaves 'ry'.

'Hangry' is defined as the quality of being angry or irritable due to hunger. This portmanteau might be older than you think, as it first appeared in 1918 in a letter by Arthur Ransome, author of the "Swallows and Amazons" series of books. It became popular in the 2000s, and was recognised as a word by the OED in 2018.

The periodic table symbols for bromine and oxygen, plus a man, plus the 'ace' card without its 'a' combine to make a match for the portmanteau word 'bromanace'.

Described as a close and friendly non-sexual relationship between two men, the term bromance came into being in the 1990s, at the tip of the pen of Dave Carnie, the editor of a skateboard magazine. He was commenting on the camaraderie between male skateboarders who spent a lot of time together. The use of this portmanteau became wider spread after being taken up by the film industry.

To match the word 'fortnight', you needed to choose the picture of a fort added to a night sky.

Probably the oldest of the portmanteaus in this quiz, a fortnight is a period of fourteen nights or two weeks. It found its way into the language from a seventeenth century contraction of the Middle English word 'fourteniht' which in turn came from Old English 'feowertyne niht', meaning literally fourteen nights.

The picture match for 'banoffee pie' was a band, without the d; coffee without the c; and the symbol for pi. Yuuuuum, pie.

If you haven't tried a Banoffee pie, find a recipe and make it! Made of a banana and creamy toffee mix inside a sweet short pastry piecrust and served with cream or ice cream, this one will be a favourite at your next dinner party.

It is thought to have been invented at The Hungry Monk pub in West Sussex in the 1970s, when the chef threw together ingredients he had in the kitchen, using caramelised sweetened condensed milk instead of custard mixed with bananas. It's usually topped with a layer of whipped cream.

No, not Pluto, pluot! This time you had to remove the 'g' from plug and the 'kn' from a knot in order to match the portmanteau word 'pluot'.

There's a bit of a story to this one. Luther Burbank was a pretty famous horticulturalist in the early 1900s and he created a fruit hybrid then known as the plumcot. This was a 50-50 mix of plums and apricots. In the 1980s, Floyd Zaiger recreated the hybrid using less apricot in the mix, as little as 25%, or up to 40%, depending on the variety. The portmanteau 'pluot' came into being to describe this crossbred (not GMO) fruit.

To correctly match the portmanteau 'podcast', you had to choose the picture of pea pod, and a fisherman casting out his line. Hope you reeled it in okay.


The first podcast went online in 2001, though there is some friendly rivalry about who achieved the feat first. Given its name by Dannie Gregoire, the 'pod' part of its name came from the iPod, a portable media player, which was being used to transmit episodes of short monologues by various people. And then it grew....

For the answer to the portmanteau word 'chillax' you needed to match it with the cuddly but cold penguin and an ax(e).

Meaning to calm down and relax, the word 'chill' was being used as early as the 1920s to mean being laid-back and unfussed. It was probably paired with the word 'relax' (which dates from the 1300s) in the 1980s, though the term chillax didn't become common usage until the mid-90s.