I Heart Word Nerds, Again

The New York Times had an interesting article on "crash blossoms." Crash blossoms is the coined phrase for headlines that bring on alternate readings. This results from nouns being confused for verbs and vice versa.

English is especially prone to such ambiguities. Since English is weakly inflected (meaning that words are seldom explicitly modified to indicate their grammatical roles), many words can easily function as either noun or verb. And it just so happens that plural nouns and third-person-singular present-tense verbs [that's a lot of hyphens. And a mouthful] are marked with the exact same suffix, "-s." In everyday spoken and written language, we can usually handle this sort of grammatical uncertainty because we have enough additional clues to make the right choices of interpretation. But headlines sweep away those little words -- particularly articles, auxiliary verbs and forms of "to be" -- robbing the reader of crucial context.

These double-take headlines were first referred to as "crash blossoms" last August on an online discussion forum for Testy Copy Editors. Mike O'Connell, an American editor based in Japan, posted the headline "Violinist Linked to JAL Crash Blossoms" and joked that he wondered what a "crash blossom" was. (The article was about the successful music career of a woman whose father died in a Japan Airlines crash.) Another participant in the forum, Dan Bloom, suggested they should refer to these types of headlines as "crash blossoms."

An example of a crash blossom is "British Left Waffles on Falklands." In the correct reading, "left" is a noun (referring to liberal politicians) and "waffles" is a verb. But the headline also can conjure up images of Britons leaving breakfast food on the Falkland Islands.

Other examples of crash blossoms from the article:

*"Giant Waves Down Queen Mary's Funnel"

*"McArthur Flies Back to Front"

*"Eighth Army Push Bottles Up Germans"

*"Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim"

*"Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge"

*"McDonald's Fries the Holy Grail for Potato Farmers"

*"Google Fans Phone Expectations by Scheduling Android Event"

*"Gator Attacks Puzzle Experts"