Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: Portmanteau

  • Ohio River, Part 4 (Exploring Louisville)

    We finally arrived in Louisville after a couple days of driving and wandering. I’ll start by saying that it’s impossible to cover an entire city in a week. So we focused on one tiny corner and barely scratched the surface. I wouldn’t consider this a comprehensive guide, more like a few simple observations and a…

  • Jersey Shore, Part 5 (Positive Signs)

    I have a thing for signs and I noticed that the Jersey Shore had plenty of interesting things to tell us.  They displayed a tale of my week-long visit down the coastline in words and pictures.  I didn’t intend to search for signs, nor did I have any particular plan to remember them.  They appeared…

  • Cross-Country, Part 5 (The Eastern Half)

    We actually did a lot more than collect new counties and visit zoos.  After all, we sat in a car for five days!  I needed to stop every couple of hours to stretch my legs.  Sometimes we timed our layovers to see something interesting and sometimes things had a way of finding us.  The open…

  • Portmanteaus, Acronyms and Anagrams

    Longtime readers know how much I enjoy a good portmanteau, a word created by mashing together two other words. I’ve featured geographical occurrences several times on Twelve Mile Circle, for example Dueling Portmanteau Placenames. I’ve also traveled intentionally to various portmanteau locations such as the towns of Mardela Springs and Delmar along the Maryland-Delaware border.…

  • Better Geographic Portmanteaus

    Longtime readers of Twelve Mile Circle know that I love a good portmanteau, the smooshing together of two distinct words to form a new word that combines their meaning. These occur geographically too. My favorite examples involve the adjacent towns of Mexicali and Calexico on the border between Mexico and the U.S. state of California.…

  • What the Stravenue?

    Followers of Twelve Mile Circle are aware of my fascination with portmanteaus, the mashing together of two distinct words to form a single new word (see the portmanteau tag for several examples). So I stumbled across a new one, or at least a new one to me, as I attempted to find variations on Public…

  • Mardela to Delmar

    I’ve expressed my enjoyment of geographic portmanteaus previously. These are place names created by mashing together two or more other place names. Delmarva is a perfect example. The Delmarva Peninsula on the east coast of the United States is bound on the east by the Delaware River and the Atlantic Ocean, and on the west…

  • Caro-what?

    Anyone following Twelve Mile Circle for any length of time knows that I have an unnatural fixation on borders and boundaries. I particularly enjoy those places split by borders or positioned directly alongside borders especially with a purpose in mind. I thought I’d discovered, either on my own or through the generous contributions of readers…

  • Dueling Portmanteau Placenames

    My recent article on Mexican borders visible on Street View reminded me of a situation that’s long fascinated me. It came to the forefront as I viewed this image: Can you find the border in this image? Sure you can. That’s a silly question. Calexico vs. Mexicali The rural area north of this amazingly stark…

  • In Them Old Cotton Fields

    Little did reader Ian Dunbar realize that he struck a nerve when he commented on the Bordersplit article. It had nothing to do with his fine words or sentiment. I was in total agreement. Glaring geographical errors in songs grate on my nerves too. My nemesis happens to be a completely different musical composition but…