Vol. 10 · Portmanteaus ·Early 20th century ·1934
Muzak
music Kodak
- Meaning
- Background music in shops and lifts; bland instrumental filler music.
- Source words
- music + Kodak
- Coined by
- George Owen Squier
- Year
- 1934
Background
Squier, a US Army general and radio pioneer, blended *music* with *Kodak* because he admired the brand name. Muzak became both a company and a genre; the lower-case generic usage ("piped-in muzak") is a 1960s development.
Early 20th century
Industrialisation generated new things that needed new names, fast. Motoring, electricity, telecommunications, and urban pollution all produced portmanteaus within a generation of their arrival.
Two words, one coinage.
Browse every portmanteau on the shelf — or cross over to the loanwords atlas.