crash blossom
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From a headline, "Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms". The author's intended interpretation is that the violinist (Diana Yukawa), who has blossomed, is linked to a JAL plane crash (since her father was on the plane). However, through syntactic ambiguity, the sentence can also be interpreted to mean that the violinist was linked to something called a "crash blossom".[1]
Noun
[edit]crash blossom (plural crash blossoms)
- (linguistics) A sentence, often a news headline, that is subject to incorrect interpretation due to syntactic and/or lexical ambiguity.
- 2010 January 27, Ben Zimmer, “Crash Blossoms”, On Language, in New York Times Magazine[1], archived from the original on 1 February 2010:
- Nouns that can be misconstrued as verbs and vice versa are, in fact, the hallmarks of the crash blossom. Take this headline, often attributed to The Guardian: “British Left Waffles on Falklands.”
References
[edit]- ^ Ben Zimmer, "On Language: Crash Blossoms", New York Times Magazine, January 27, 2010 online text