Crash blossoms | Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Archive for the ‘Crash blossoms’ Category

A Brokavian crash blossom

May 2, 2018

… committed by The Onion recently (hat tip to Jerry Zee):

(#1)

Posted in Ambiguity, Crash blossoms, Errors, Headlines, Parsing | 1 Comment »

Search:
You are currently browsing the archives for the Crash blossoms category.
Pages
Archives
- May 2024
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
Categories
- AAVE (1)
- Abbreviation (128)
  - Acronyms (20)
  - Initialisms (43)
- Academic life (87)
- Accent (10)
- Accents (3)
- Acting (40)
- Active and passive (1)
- Actors (126)
- Administration (1)
- Adverbs (1)
- Advice literature (3)
- Age (4)
- AI (1)
- Allusion (8)
- Ambiguity (526)
- Anaphoric islands (1)
- Animal communication (27)
- Animation (5)
- Anniversaries (6)
- Announcements (11)
- Anthropology (2)
- Architecture (24)
- Art (703)
  - Collages (18)
- Art/lit/music/film (296)
  - Collages (8)
- Articles (4)
- Association (3)
- Attachment (2)
- Attitudes (8)
- Awards (24)
- AZ terminology (2)
- Bibliography (2)
- Bilingualism (9)
- Blasphemy (1)
- Blends (4)
- Books (482)
- Borrowing (4)
- Brevity vs. Clarity (8)
- Calendars (8)
- California (1)
- Capitalization (1)
- Captioning (19)
- Captions (142)
- Cartoon conventions (19)
- Cartoonists (19)
- Categorization and Labeling (260)
  - Kinship terms (1)
- Censorship (1)
- Changing times (4)
- Child language (17)
- Childhood (14)
- Classification and labeling (15)
- Clothing (756)
  - Costumes (8)
  - Fashion (39)
  - Hats (5)
  - Shirtlessness (182)
  - Shoes (10)
  - Underwear (409)
- Color (41)
- Communication (2)
- Complements (1)
- Composites (2)
- Computational linguistics (2)
- Conditions in conflict (14)
- Conferences (8)
- Conjunctions (1)
- Conlangs (6)
- Connectives (1)
- Conversation (32)
- Correction (3)
- Count & Mass (2)
- Count & Mass (1)
- Count & Mass (3)
- Count & mass (2)
- Crime (1)
- Culture (15)
- Cutnpaste (1)
- Dance (48)
- Dancers (15)
- Danglers (6)
- Dangling modifiers (2)
- Data (1)
- Data points (8)
- Death notices (160)
- Design (11)
- Diners (78)
- Discourse (33)
- Discourse organization (8)
- Discourse structure (2)
- Dissimilation (1)
- Double entendre (5)
- Double entendres (49)
- Earworms (4)
- Editing conventions (5)
- Education (2)
- Eggcorns (84)
- Endangered languages (1)
- Eponyms (2)
- Errors (339)
  - Blends (21)
  - Malapropisms (10)
  - Mishearings (74)
  - Misreadings (14)
  - Snowclones (7)
    - Snowclonelet composites (2)
  - Telescopings (5)
  - Typos (21)
  - Word confusions (16)
  - Word exchanges (2)
  - Word exchanges / reversals (5)
  - Word retrieval errors (3)
- Ethnicity (1)
- Etymological Fallacy (7)
- Etymology (117)
- Etymythology (9)
- Events (19)
- Events and occasions (9)
- Evolution (25)
- Expressive language (10)
- Faces (11)
- Facial expression (37)
- Facial expression and gesture (45)
  - Gaze (18)
- Facial expressions (51)
- Faith vs. WF (3)
- Faithfulness (1)
- Family life (4)
- Fiction (28)
- Figurative language (428)
  - Bathos (1)
  - Chiasmus (10)
  - Hypallage (9)
  - Hyperbole (7)
  - Inversion (1)
  - Metaphor (271)
  - Metonymy (74)
  - Oxymoron (9)
  - Personification (4)
  - Simile (9)
  - Zeugma (13)
- Figures of speech (1)
- Film (6)
- Folk beliefs (1)
- Folklore (13)
- For reference (15)
- Formulaic expressions (11)
- Formulaic language (386)
  - Aphorisms (3)
  - Catchphrases (32)
  - Clichés (22)
  - Clickbait (1)
  - Conversational formulas (1)
  - Jargon (2)
  - Mantras (2)
  - Memes (5)
  - Proverbs (20)
  - Routines and rituals (9)
  - Slogans (22)
  - Snowclones (128)
    - Snowclonelet composites (19)
  - Stock expressions (16)
- Furnishings and tools (27)
- Gay porn (312)
- Gay voice (4)
- Gayland (42)
- Gender and sexuality (1,896)
  - Effeminacy (11)
- Geography (9)
- Gesture (30)
  - Stance (7)
- Grammar (4)
- Grammatical categories (69)
  - augmentative (2)
  - Case (2)
  - Count & mass (35)
  - Definiteness (4)
  - Diminutive (4)
  - Familiar and polite (1)
  - Gender (9)
  - Singular & plural (11)
- Grammatical gender (5)
- Grammatical number (2)
- Graphic novels (8)
- Headline trouble (7)
- Headlines (27)
- Historical linguistics (7)
- History (25)
- Holidays (573)
- Homophony (3)
- Homosexuality (326)
- Humor (118)
  - Pranks (6)
- Identities (12)
- Idioms (283)
- Illusions (7)
- Indirection (1)
- Inflectional morphology (1)
- Initalisms (2)
- Innovations (61)
  - Retronyms (1)
- Innuendo (2)
- Insults (9)
- Interjections (11)
- It's Just Stuff (13)
- Jokes (64)
- Kinship (7)
- Labels Are Not Definitions (1)
- Language (2)
- Language acquisition (32)
- Language and animals (411)
- Language and art (4)
- Language and business (6)
- Language and class (7)
- Language and culture (32)
- Language and ethnicity (16)
- Language and food (1,113)
- Language and gender (131)
- Language and geography (6)
- Language and gesture (4)
- Language and medicine (159)
- Language and music (19)
- Language and plants (456)
- Language and poitics (15)
- Language and politics (149)
- Language and race (30)
- Language and religion (124)
- Language and science (2)
- Language and sexuality (62)
- Language and society (43)
- Language and sports (54)
- Language and the body (628)
- Language and the law (62)
- Language and the media (3)
- Language and the sexes (18)
- Language and thought (4)
- Language change (36)
- Language differences (3)
- Language disorders (2)
- Language families (1)
- Language in advertising (391)
- Language in art (6)
- Language in education (5)
- Language in politics (21)
- Language in social life (6)
- Language in society (1)
- Language in the media (46)
- Language in the news (15)
- Language learning (4)
- Language of advertising (54)
- Language of children (4)
- Language of clothing (44)
- Language of medicine (19)
- Language of science (14)
- Language of sex (437)
- Language of teenagers (37)
- Language play (1,360)
  - Alliteration (33)
  - Anagrams (7)
  - Assonance (1)
  - Nonsense (26)
  - Palindromes (6)
  - Parodies (47)
  - Playful morphology (37)
  - Puns (629)
  - Rebuses (1)
  - Rhyme (52)
  - Spoonerisms (15)
  - Tongue twisters (8)
  - Zeugma (4)
- Language processing (13)
- Language teaching and learning (8)
- Language technology (23)
- Languages (163)
  - Arabic (2)
  - ASL (1)
  - Basque (1)
  - Chinese (4)
  - Dutch (4)
  - Estonian (1)
  - Finnish (2)
  - French (30)
  - German (22)
  - Greek (6)
  - Hebrew (1)
  - Italian (11)
  - Japanese (6)
  - Korean (1)
  - Kurdish (1)
  - Latin (9)
  - Polish (1)
  - Portuguese (2)
  - Romansh (1)
  - Russian (9)
  - Sanskrit (4)
  - Sardinian (1)
  - Spanish (31)
  - Turkish (1)
  - Ukrainian (3)
  - Welsh (2)
  - Yiddish (7)
- Lexicography (56)
- Life on the net (5)
- Linguistic creativity (1)
- Linguistic diversity (4)
- Linguistic theory (6)
- Linguistics in the comics (3,396)
  - Comic conventions (270)
  - Understanding comics (170)
- Linguistics in the media (3)
- Linguists (93)
- Links (109)
- Literature (7)
- Lives (3)
- Male art (73)
- Mammoths (37)
- Mantras (2)
- Masculinity (205)
- Mathematics (27)
- Memes (11)
- Memory (67)
- Metaphors (2)
- Metrics (3)
- Misreading (1)
- Misreadings (5)
  - Crash blossoms (1)
- Mistakes (6)
- Modality (2)
- Modifiers (8)
- Morning names (146)
- Morphology (1,436)
  - Back formation (79)
  - Combining forms (19)
  - Compounds (383)
    - Synthetic compounds (44)
  - Conversion (249)
    - Beheading (14)
    - Nouning (81)
    - Verbing (118)
  - Derivation (138)
  - Inflection (83)
  - Libfixes (100)
  - Morphophonology (10)
  - Portmanteaus (576)
    - Phrasal overlap portmanteaus (58)
- Motels (1)
- Movies (53)
- Movies and television (16)
- Movies and tv (756)
- Music (881)
- My life (698)
- Myths (32)
- Names (961)
  - Common vs. proper (9)
  - Ethnonyms and demonyms (9)
  - Nicknames (25)
  - Placenames (11)
  - Professional names (9)
  - Pseudonyms (12)
  - Taxonomic vs. common (20)
  - Titles (6)
  - Trade names (49)
- Naming (23)
- Narrative (18)
- Narratophilia (2)
- Newspaper headlines (1)
- Nicknames (1)
- Nonverbal communication (2)
- Not about language (85)
- Numbers (8)
- Obscenity (12)
  - Sound symbolism (7)
- Oddities (1)
- Offers (20)
- Onomatopoeia (10)
- Ordinary vs. technical lg (54)
- Origins of language (3)
- Palo Alto (5)
- Panda postings (4)
- Paralinguistics and kinesics (8)
- Parallelism (6)
- Parody (117)
- Parsing (23)
- Peeving (48)
- Penguins (181)
- People (10)
- Perception (17)
- Performance (3)
- Performatives (1)
- Personal life (10)
- Philosophy (32)
- Phonetics (43)
- Phonology (125)
- Photography (182)
- Pidgins and creoles (6)
- Play (7)
- Plays (6)
- Pleonasm (13)
- Poetic form (118)
- Poetry (217)
- Pop culture (368)
- Porn (4)
- Porn actors (4)
- Pornography (6)
- Pragmatics (366)
  - Address terms (39)
  - Apologies (6)
  - Context (64)
  - Greetings (4)
  - Insults (24)
  - Lying (1)
  - Metalinguistics (1)
  - Point of view (3)
  - Politeness (12)
  - Sarcasm and irony (24)
  - Speech acts (56)
- Princeton (4)
- Prizes (3)
- Processing (14)
- Pronouns (3)
- Pronunciation (28)
- Prosody (18)
- Prostitution (1)
- Psycholinguistics (10)
- Psychology (25)
- Psychology of language (26)
- Public and private (7)
- Publications (4)
- Punctuation (48)
- Questions (2)
- Quotation (12)
- Quotations (79)
- Race and ethnicity (97)
- Rainbow (76)
- Rainbow clothing (33)
- Rainbows (6)
- Reading (3)
- Redundancy (2)
- Reference (1)
- Resources (35)
- Riddles (5)
- Scholarly life (2)
- Science (36)
  - Astronomy (1)
  - Biology (5)
  - Chemistry (3)
  - Physics (1)
  - Social sciences (2)
- Science news (10)
- Science reporting (2)
- Seasons (1)
- Semantics (798)
  - Aktionsart (9)
  - Anaphora (41)
  - Aspect (1)
  - Compositional semantics (7)
  - Connotation (14)
  - Counterfactuals (2)
  - Deixis (4)
  - Form and function (1)
  - Implicature (31)
  - Lexical semantics (368)
    - Semantics of compounds (54)
  - Modality (4)
  - Opposition (11)
  - Paradoxes (10)
  - Participant roles (4)
  - Possession (5)
  - Prototype semantics (3)
  - Questions (1)
  - Reference (9)
  - Relevance (15)
  - Scalarity (6)
  - Scope (1)
  - Subsectivity (36)
  - Synonyms (9)
  - Tense-aspect-mood (10)
  - Time (3)
  - Use and mention (21)
  - Vagueness (2)
  - Words and things (35)
- Short shots (13)
- Sign language (2)
- Signage (16)
- Signs and symbols (677)
  - Emoji (10)
  - Flags (26)
  - Logos (30)
  - Mascots (28)
  - Phallicity (362)
  - Pictographs (2)
  - Vaginality (22)
- Silliness (161)
- Singing (6)
- Singular & plural (1)
- Slang (257)
- Slogans (16)
- Slurs (11)
- Smell (13)
- Social class (15)
- Social interactions (15)
- Social life (134)
- Social media (2)
- Sociocultural conventions (48)
- Sociocultural Roles (7)
- Sociolinguistics (33)
- Spam (8)
- Spanish (1)
- Speech style (15)
- Spelling (114)
  - Eye dialect (1)
- Sports (2)
- Stanford (37)
- Stereotyping (6)
- Stories (4)
- Style and register (116)
- Superstitions (3)
- Surrealism (5)
- Surveys (1)
- Switzerland and Swiss things (56)
- Symbols (1)
- Syntactic functions (2)
- Syntactic theories (1)
- Syntax (584)
  - Adverbs (6)
  - Agreement (22)
  - Argument structure (92)
  - Clitics (6)
  - Comparison (6)
  - Complementation (14)
  - Constituency (11)
  - Constructions (19)
  - Coordination (48)
  - Disjunction (2)
  - Ellipsis (24)
  - Extraction (2)
  - Government (6)
  - Hypotaxis and parataxis (1)
  - Modification (110)
    - Danglers (24)
    - GenX so (2)
    - Modifier attachment (6)
  - Morphology and syntax (11)
  - Negation (28)
  - Passive (9)
  - Phonology and Syntax (2)
  - Pronoun case (63)
  - Recursion (4)
  - Reflexives (3)
  - Relativization (15)
  - Split infinitives (9)
  - Stranded P (2)
  - Syntactic categories (20)
  - The syntax-phonology interface (1)
  - Word order (13)
- Taboo language and slurs (465)
  - Euphemism (78)
  - Obscenicons (12)
- Teaching (6)
- Teaching and learning (4)
- Technical and ordinary language (116)
- Technology (84)
  - Gaming (2)
- Television (2)
- Terminology (25)
- Testing (2)
- Texting (9)
- The media (3)
- Theater (7)
- These modern times (49)
- This blogging life (120)
- Thought (1)
- Titles (2)
- Toys (24)
- Toys and games (47)
- Translation (25)
- Truncation (133)
  - Beheading (5)
  - Clipping (52)
- Typography (3)
- Uncategorized (152)
- Universals (2)
- Usage (65)
  - Jargon (10)
- Usage advice (110)
- Usage attitudes (89)
  - Peeving (21)
- Variation (228)
  - Dialects (86)
    - AAVE / Black English (6)
- Verbings (3)
- Visual puns (1)
- Vocabulary (10)
- Weather (4)
- Weirdness (1)
- Word attraction (18)
- Word aversion and attraction (7)
- Word confusion (2)
- Word play (6)
- Words (109)
- Writers (26)
- Writing (62)
- Writing conventions (1)
- Writing systems (27)
- Zwickys (82)