Lifelong learning of lexis

I was looking through the stories in a newsletter I receive from Designtaxi and noticed one of the headlines - not particularly because of the story, but because of one word in it:

Adult Website Crowdsources Ideas

It was the word 'crowdsource' that caught my eye.  I may have seen it before, but I certainly hadn't 'noticed' it before.  

tweakyourbiz.com

'Noticing words' is something that I have included in several talks that I've given.  I can even remember my first 'noticing' experience.  I was in the back of my parents' car.  I can't remember exactly what the conversation was about, but my mum said 'He must have been...'.  I recall asking myself: 'Is that 'must of' or 'must have'?'  The budding linguist was alert!

Back to 'crowdsource'.  I checked the exact meaning in the Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary and this is what I found:

crowdsource

verb [I or T] /ˈkraʊdˌsɔːs/   /-sɔːrs/

› to give tasks to a large group of people or to the general public, for example, by asking for help on the internet, rather than having tasks done within a company by employees:The company plans to crowdsource the translation of its new web app.

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/crowdsource?q=crowdsource

http://en.paperblog.com/content-creation-how-you-crowdsource-your-efforts-751657/

Crowdsource' is apparently a very new word, and is related to another word:  outsource

outsource

verb [I or T]     /ˈaʊt.sɔːs/   /-sɔːrs/

› If a company outsources, it pays to have part of its work done by anothercompany:Unions are fighting a plan by universities to outsource all non-academic services.Some companies outsource to cheaper locations to cut costs.outsourcing     /ˈaʊtˌsɔː.sɪŋ/   /-ˌsɑː-/ noun [U]›The management guaranteed that outsourcing wouldn't mean job losses.              

http://www.mamumediallc.com/storage/bigstock-Outsourcing-Word-Cloud-Concept-29451263.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1363786585051

Outsourcing and crowdsourcing  are two portmanteau words - words by joining together two words, sometimes with no letters being omitted when they're joined like these two.  In other instances, some letters are omitted, like brunch, Spanglish, sitcom.  

On the other blog I'm involved in, we wrote about portmanteau words in a post and created an exercise.  

I've just started a board in pinterest with illustrations of portmanteau words.  My aim is to add to this and my other teaching boards there.  Just need to have 30 hours in a day to do all the things I'd like to!!!!