« previous post | next post »

"Crash blossoms" — those ambiguously phrased headlines that encourage absurd interpretations — are flourishing like never before. Here's a roundup of the latest specimens spotted in the wild.

1. "Matt Cassel trade a simple, cheap bandage for Bills QB problem" (CBS Sports, Mar. 4, 2015)

It might be tempting to read "trade" as a verb, even if it doesn't agree with its ostensible subject, the singular "Matt Cassel." That reading is helped along by the rest of the sentence, since it's of the form "trade X for Y." But no one is trading a bandage for a problem here. Instead, "Matt Cassel trade" (i.e., the trade of quarterback Matt Cassel from the Minnesota Vikings to the Buffalo Bills) is the actual subject, and the predicate (after a deleted copula) gives the writer's opinion that the trade is a simple, cheap bandage for the Bills' quarterback problem. (It would have been more idiomatic to call the trade a "Band-Aid," but perhaps CBS Sports didn't want to get a call from Johnson & Johnson's trademark lawyers.)

(Hat tip, Brett Wilson.)

2. "Doctor Who Helped Harrison Ford After Crash: 'I'm a Big Fan'" (Huffington Post, Mar. 6, 2015 — later revised)

I read this headline all wrong first. So disappointed when I realised my mistake… #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/D0heQD0PtR — Asa M Larsson (@archasa) March 7, 2015

This is only the latest in a long line of "Doctor Who" crash blossoms. Last October, Mark Liberman posted the chyron, "Doctor Who Tested Positive for Ebola Took Subway, Went Bowling in Brooklyn." That was a few days after a commenter noted "Doctor Who Discovered Ebola In 1976 Fears 'Unimaginable Tragedy'." A few others:

With some of these examples, you can start with the "Doctor Who" reading and then realize you went down the garden path when you hit a second verb ("fears," "faces," "gets"). It's a purer crash blossom if that verb never comes, which can happen because of a deleted copula ("[is] in jail"), or as in the Harrison Ford example, when there's a missing "said" represented by the colon before the quote.

(Hat tip, Dierk Haasis.)

3. "Boeheim taunted by fans, mum after loss" (ESPN.com, Mar. 7, 2015, later revised)

Even after my roughest days at the office, my mother hardly ever taunts me. http://t.co/DJCZAYr9Lt pic.twitter.com/cEY81gIyQR — Carl Bialik (@CarlBialik) March 7, 2015

This headline appeared when Syracuse men's basketball coach Jim Boeheim, after his team's season ended with a loss at North Carolina State, was taunted by NC State fans and then remained quiet by skipping the traditional postgame news conference. Once again, copula deletion comes into play, since "[is] taunted by fans" and "[is] mum after loss" are supposed to be read as conjoined predicates. Instead, it's possible to read "fans" and "mum" as conjoined objects of "taunted by." "Mum" is a chiefly British English word for "mother," but the dialectal mismatch just makes it even sillier.

(Hat tip, UrsusMaritimus.)

4. "Public urged to keep track of squirrels with mobiles" (The Press & Journal, Scotland, Mar. 11, 2015)

Squirrels with mobiles. Seen one yet? pic.twitter.com/r80UofN3yT — David Hughes (@usernameerror) March 11, 2015

This one hinges on good ol' attachment ambiguity. Because of what Arnold Zwicky calls "the lure of low attachment," it's tempting to read the prepositional phrase "with mobiles" as attaching directly to "squirrels," rather than understanding that it modifies the entire VP "keep track of squirrels." For other recent crash blossoms along these lines, see Mark Liberman's trio of posts: "Attachment ambiguity of the day" (1/30/15), "PP attachment ambiguity of the week" (2/14/15), and "Oscar crash blossom" (2/23/15).

(Hat tip, Bonnie Taylor-Blake.)

5. "How Exactly Does an Elder Abuse Investigation Work?" (Slate, Mar. 13, 2015)

There's no elliptical headlinese in this one, but it's still prone to ambiguity, especially when it appears as above, with a line break after the word "elder." You might think the question is how an elder abuses investigation work, when the real question being addressed is how an elder abuse investigation works.

How exactly does [an elder] abuse [investigation work]?

vs.

How exactly does [an [elder abuse] investigation] work?

(Hat tip, Jacob Stulberg.)

That should be enough to tide you over while you wait for the release of the debut album from The Crash Blossoms, a contemporary acoustic group out of East Yorkshire.

Permalink