Twitter Domains and Language

Most Twitter applications and services have their own domain name which refers to Twitter and sometimes to the service they are offering their users. Most of them have a ‘.com’ and start with ‘tw’. I thought I could not stay behind, so I registered a domain this morning; twesis.info. Like other domains this name is a portmanteau or linguistic blend of the words ‘Twitter’ and ‘thesis’. The usage of the word ‘portmanteau’ in this sense first appeared in Lewis Carroll’s book Through the Looking-Glass (1871). Other existing examples I like of these blends are Twitterific (Twitter & terrific), Twidget (Twitter & widget) or Twurl (Twitter & url). Here, twitter is still a neologism although many people within new media studies know what it means and start to play with it. From twesis the words twesism could derive, or twesister but better not twesisaster.