A portmanteau is a piece of luggage, usually made of leather and opening into two equal parts. Some are large, upright, and hinged at the back and enable hanging up clothes in one half,[1] while others are much smaller bags (such as Gladstone bags) with two equally sized compartments.[2]
The word derives from the French word portemanteau (from porter, "to carry", and manteau, "coat") which nowadays means a coat rack but was in the past also used to refer to a traveling case or bag for clothes.[3][4]
Portmanteau mail bag
Portmanteaux used to carry letters
In the 1700s, the term also described a mail bag.[5] This continued into the 1800s for bags used by the United States Postal Service.[6][7] An 1823 resolution in Congress further stated that "locks... will be placed on the portmanteaus containing the principal mails [which] can only be opened... at the distributing offices."[8]
^Chmara, Agnieszka (March 26, 2018). "Portmanteau". Eighteenth Century Lit.pbworks.com. Retrieved September 2, 2023. A 1726 dictionary defines a portmanteau as a Mail or a Cloak Bag...
^Marsh, Allison. "US Postal Bag Prototype". National Postal Museum. Retrieved September 2, 2023. In the 19th century, both newspapers and letters were placed in a portmanteau, a round, side-opening, leather bag.
^"Mail bag". Shaker Museum and Library. October 19, 2016. Retrieved September 2, 2023. This style of bag, sometimes called a portmanteau, was used by the Post Office Department in the mid-1800s to transport mail...
