The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #172874   Message #4199546
Posted By: Lighter
22-Mar-24 - 05:33 PM
Thread Name: BS: Language Pet Peeves part II
Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves part II
"Trump frustrated as bond deadline nears and key bacteria identified in colon cancer cases."

There's now a name for these syntactically ambiguous sentences. They're called "crash blossoms."

Why? According to Merriam-Webster:

"While crash blossoms themselves are as old as newspapers, the term dates back to 2009, when editor Mike O'Connell saw an ambiguous headline that appeared in the newspaper Japan Today— 'Violinist Linked to JAL Crash Blossoms' —and wondered in the Testy Copy Editors forum, 'What's a crash blossom?'"