crash blossom
crash blossom noun: a sentence, often a news headline, that is subject to incorrect interpretation due to syntactic and/or lexical ambiguity.
Noun
crash blossom (plural crash blossoms)
- 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.”2010 January 27, Ben Zimmer, “Crash Blossoms”, On Language, in New York Times Magazine, archived from the original on 01 Feb 2010
Forms of crash blossom
| plural | crash blossoms |
|---|
Origin of crash blossom
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".
Questions about crash blossom
- What does crash blossom mean?
- Crash blossom means a sentence, often a news headline, that is subject to incorrect interpretation due to syntactic and/or lexical ambiguity.
- What part of speech is crash blossom?
- Crash blossom is a noun.
- What is the plural of crash blossom?
- The plural of crash blossom is crash blossoms.
Words near crash blossom in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: crash blossom (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “crash blossom.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/crash_blossom. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.