crash blossom

noun

Etymology

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".

Definitions

  1. A sentence, often a news headline, that is subject to incorrect interpretation due to…

    A sentence, often a news headline, that is subject to incorrect interpretation due to syntactic and/or lexical ambiguity.

    • 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.”

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for crash blossom. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA