Arthur Schopenhauer espouncing his philosophical pessimism.

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From a short paragraph on Arthur Schopenhauer:

He is known for having espounced a sort of philosophical pessimism that saw life as being essentially evil and futile, but saw hope in aesthetics, sympathy for others and ascetic living.

Dr. Boli actually looked up the word “espounce” to make sure it was not a word that had been out there in the wild all this time without his noticing it. It does not seem to be very common, at any rate.

But we can see what happened here. To espouse a philosophical position, in the current use of the term, is to adopt it as one’s own (or, in the original sense, to marry it, which may or may not be legal in your jurisdiction). To expound an idea is to set it forth in detail. A philosophical writer naturally does both: one expounds the ideas that one espouses. The two notions go together and are easily conflated, and we end up with something like espounce. If jaguars had philosophical ideas, they would certainly espounce them.

This is a more perfect portmanteau word than most. Your average portmanteau word, like “transponder,” is an obvious combination of the first part of one word and the last part of another. In espounce the words seem to have collided at such a high velocity that they have become inextricably blended. It is possible to recognize the blending, but it is not possible to see where one begins and the other ends. It is something like mocha, in which chocolate and coffee combine to make a flavor that is obviously chocolate-and-coffee, but not first chocolate, then suddenly coffee.

In fact, it is a portmanteau word in the original sense of the term, for the term “portmanteau” was adopted by Humpty Dumpty to explain some of the unusual vocabulary in “Jabberwocky”:

“Well, ‘slithy’ means ‘lithe and slimy.’ ‘Lithe’ is the same as ‘active.’ You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”

Slithy is just the same sort of construction as espounce. It is not first one word, then the other, but the two words folded together completely. Or, if you prefer a chemical metaphor, it is not a suspension, but a solution.

So we have discovered a new word. Now, we could mock the writer for an obvious mistake. In fact, that is what Dr. Boli set out to do. But instead he began to like the word espounce, and is now disposed to suggest that we should embrace it as expressing an idea not otherwise easily expressed: the idea of simultaneously espousing an idea and expounding it to others.