sarchasm

Origin:
sarcasm + chasm = sarchasm

Definition:
n. the yawning emotional and personal crevasse that suddenly opens between two people when one fails to understand the other's sarcasm.

Exemplum:
Walter's jest about "those tawny liberals" was not well received by the waitstaff, resulting in a sarchasm that swallowed up his drink service almost immediately.

Commentary:
Today's portmanteau begins a short series of neologisms that all involve sarcasm. It's a testy practice and a loaded word-- loaded with portmanteau potential, that is. So look forward to more in the coming days.

Now, on to "sarchasm." The true strength of this term is its poignancy. Sarcasm lovers such as myself have all experienced sarchasm in the face of a dense audience. It's dismal-- you're giving them gold; they're giving you death stares. But the high-risk-high-reward nature of sarcasm is what makes it great. You say the opposite of what you mean and rely on your audience to use contextual cues and their mores of good sense to interpret the humor. When it works, everyone loves you. When it fails, you're on the solitary side of the sarchasm.

The big weakness to this term is its homophonality to "sarcasm." Since these words are pronounced identically, using "sarchasm" in speech is likely to meet with more confusion than appreciation. In writing, "sarchasm" may be used to great effect, but in speech it is unwieldy.

While it's unfortunate that such a formidable portmanteau has limited use potential, it illustrates a vital point: some portmanteaux are too close to the original words. When it's too close to the component words, a portmanteau may be unidentifiable. Thus the best portmanteaux use the distinguishing parts (both visually and aurally) of multiple component words to create a new term that is both uniquely meaningful and intuitive.

Credit:
Timothy O'Connell (term and definition), Nate Winter (the rest)