A word on our Blog’s name. alluminate is the blending of two words “All” and “Illuminate.” People are reasonably comfortable with word blends since at least 1895, when the word “Brunch” appeared in the British magazine, Hunter’s Weekly (which went belly up in 1896, possibly because British society was not yet ready for the term brunch). Nearly a century later, Britain warmed to word blending as is evidenced by the pervasive use of terms such as chunnel, infomercial and croissandwich.
On a related note, the actual blending of two or more words to form one word required that a new word be created to crystallize the concept, and that word is portmanteau. Some refer to blended words as contractions but I was told by someone who is really, really smart that a contraction is more appropriate in the grammatical sense. You don’t say.
We chose the word “All” because we wanted the flexibility to write about anything. For the record, we will most likely stay within the confines of digital marketing or at least something defensibly tangential to our industry. We chose the word “Illuminate” because it conveys a sense of deeper understanding or the shedding of light. Can’t promise anything here but we’ll do our best to deliver as much insight as possible.
I should also mention that one requirement of the blog name was that it work with our logo. Since the word “alluminate” begins with the letter “a” and our logo includes the graphic treatment of the letter “a” this requirement was satisfied soundly. And phonetically, it even sounds similar to “illuminate.”
