Catfe- A Portmanteau Experiment

For this assignment, I turned to the NY Times to find interesting words to combine as my portmanteau. After some searching, I came across an article called "At a Cat Cafe, Sipping and Purring" and decided to combine "cat" and "cafe" to create catfe.  I couldn't think of a more in-depth definition that I use frequently enough in day-to-day context so I decided to stick to a simple definition just to see if people would catch on.

Catfe  (adj): used to describe a statement or phrase that is astonishing or unbelievable

Example: "You're telling me that it takes 24 trees to make 1 ton of newspaper? No way, that's so catfe!"

When I tried using this adjective at first, people would make faces of confusion but did not directly question it. For example, my coworker was telling a story about how she fainted once and I said how that was catfe and must've been so scary. Everyone in the conversation just looked at me kind of confused but nobody asked me to clarify. The first week, people kind of ignored my word, assuming they misheard me or that I unintentionally messed up what I was saying. As more time passed, people were catching on that I was using catfe on purpose, and I could tell that people were getting tired of me using this word. I used it at home once and my parents told me that it sounded dumb. I agree with them. A few others asked me what the word was and thought it was weird. After explaining this assignment, they understood more but still thought the word wouldn't really catch on.

I guess you could say that my little experiment was a bit of a failure. Nobody picked up my use of the word. That's probably because of the context and how weird it sounded in general. I think for a portmanteau to really catch on, it has to flow off the tongue and just feel natural, like chillax. Chillax is easy to say and the definition is easily discernible. Catfe definitely felt forced.

Looking at my experience testing my portmaneau, I felt really silly implementing my word in day-to-day use. I actually forgot to use it sometimes because it was such an unnatural combination of syllables. At the end of the day, this assignment did help me think more creatively. I also realized that not every idea you have will be a success, and that's OK. Use that information as a lesson to help you improve in the future.