Alcopops 会响的瓶子

Alcopops

One of the big questions always with a language is: "how do new words come into being?".

Well, you can borrow them from other languages of course; a lot of English words are like that.

But one of the lesser-known ways of making new words is to form a blend- and a blend is when you run two words together to make a third word.

And people have done it since the beginning of English actually.

To take a recent example: alcopops - carbonated fruit flavoured drinks containing alcohol - a very controversial thing this was when they first came in a few years ago, because it was obviously being aimed at children, and people were very concerned that children would now have some alcohol introduced into them that they weren't expecting.

But it's the word I want to talk about today - a very interesting word indeed!

Alco is obviously the first part of the word, shortened version of "alcohol". Alco-pops . And pops is the second part of the word.

Pop you might not know so much about. It has quite a long-standing usage.

It's basically the word for lemonade once upon a time.