Following the wild BYU victory over Washington, where a questionable excessive celebration penalty contributed to Washington missing a key extra point, an extremely-excited Lou Holtz described the outcome as "a shamesty". Presumably he thought it was both a sham and a travesty, but in his 140/80 condition he couldn't articulate either word clearly. Since that time, I've come across a number of other instances of these malcompounds, and I've come to enjoy them as a distinct linguistic phenomenon.
A few weeks ago, I read a financial report describing the surprisingly weak condition of a certain company as "abherrent," which could be just a typo, but which I interpreted as meaning something that's both aberrant and abhorrent. There certainly ought to be a word like that, and now there is.
And today there was a commentator who described tomorrow's presidential inauguration as "monumentous," which is a great combination of monumental and momentous. And she's right!
