Snidbit

A daughter who is in medical school was telling her father that she has been trying to focus on small details on her tests, and said “one snidbit” often gives away the answer. This is a word blend malaphor of “snippet” and “tidbit”, both meaning a small piece or extract of something. Single word blend malaphors are unconscious blends of words to make an unintentional new word. The word sounds or looks correct at first blush, but then on closer examination is incorrect. Examples on my website include “Buckminster Palace” (Buckingham and Westminster, and/or possibly Buckminster Fuller) and “split-minute decision” (split second and last minute). “Wegners” is a recent one (Wegmans and Redner’s, both grocery stores), uttered by Dr. Oz in last year’s Pennsylvania Senate race.

I do note that Urban Dictionary has this word in it but in this case it is a bona fide malaphor as it was unintentionally uttered without knowledge of the Urban Dictionary entry. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Snidbit

A big thanks to Julia Kooser for uttering this nice congruent conflation and John Kooser for sending it in!