The present paper seeks to examine blending, a productive word-building pattern in modern English. Blends, or portmanteau words, belong to stylistically marked and expressive lexis; they are eye- and ear-catching, which makes them a perfect choice for catchlines and slogans. Blends often serve to fill in a language gap, but seldom make it to the dictionary, since words that involve word creation rather than patterned word formation are rarely viewed as belonging to language norm and the general-purpose lexicon. Most scholars disagree on the distinction between blends and other morphological categories, such as clipped compounds, which is attested by the present study of the new entries in Oxford English Dictionary during the period of 2020 2024.