<P> Despite its French etymology (modern spelling: portemanteau), portmanteau is not used in French in this context . It is indeed a false friend . It refers to a coat stand or coat hook (literally a "coat support"), but in the past it could also refer to a cloth drape knight would use to pack their gear . It was in this context that it first came to its English use, and the metaphorical use for a linguistic phenomenon (putting one word inside another, as into a case) is an English coinage . The French linguistic term mot - valise, literally a "suitcase - word", is a relatively recent back - translation from English, attested only since 1970 . </P> <P> Although French of France is regulated by the Académie française (which has had a conservative attitude to neologisms) it produced a number of portmanteau words such as franglais (frenglish) or courriel (courrier électronique = email) and has used the technique in literature (Boris Vian) or to create brands: Transilien (Transports franciliens = Île - de-France transportation system). </P> <P> French in Canada has a second regulatory body, named OQLF, an agency of the Government of Quebec, which is independent of the Académie . It has a tendency to produce neologisms in order to replace anglicisms . It created the portmanteaus courriel and clavardage (clavier + bavardage), for example . Another example in Quebec (but made outside of OQLF) is Centricois, which means person from the region Centre - du - Québec (winner of a contest organised by the SSJB of Centre - du - Québec in 1999). </P> <P> Galician has many portmanteaus, some existing also in Portuguese but many others not (or only in the North of Portugal, close to Galicia), which can be explained by its popular origin: carambelo (frozen candy), from caramelo (candy) and carámbano (icicle); martabela (a kind of dead bolt), from martelo (hammer) and tarabela (a kind of drill bit); rabuñar (to scratch with a fingernail, for instance a cat or a person), from rabuxa (a small tail, and also a common ill in tails) and rañar (to scratch); millenta ("many thousands", also common in Portuguese milhenta), from milleiro (one thousand) and cento (one hundred); runxir (to crackle, applied to some things only), from ruxir (to howl) and renxer (to grind the teeth), or vagamundo (tramp), from vagabundo (wanderer) and mundo (world), currently "vagamundo" and "vagabundo" mean the same, and the former is considered a vulgarism . </P>

What do you call words with multiple meanings