A portmanteau is a large suitcase. The word comes from French porter carry and manteau mantle, or cloak â so it's what you carry your clothes in. Or, a portmanteau is a word made by combining two other words. You might remember portmanteau from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, where Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice the portmanteau word, in which two meanings are packed up into one word. So, according to Humpty Dumpty, slithy means lithe and slimy, and mimsy is flimsy and miserable.
to be as ugly as a mud fence definition, to be as ugly as a mud fence meaning | English dictionary. Search also in: Web News Encyclopedia Images. ugly. adj , -lier, -liest. 1 of unpleasant or unsightly appearance. 2 repulsive, objectionable, or displeasing in any way. war is ugly. 3 ominous or menacing.
Meaning softened to very unpleasant to look at late 14c. Extended sense of morally offensive is attested from c.1300; that of ill-tempered is from 1680s. Among words for this concept, ugly is unusual in being formed from a root for fear, dread.. More common is a compound meaning ill-shaped (e.g. Greek dyseides, Latin deformis, Irish dochrud, Sanskrit ku-rupa). Another Germanic group has a root sense of hate, sorrow (see loath). Ugly duckling (1877) is from the story by Hans Christian Andersen, first translated from Danish to English 1846.