Word.ws English Dictionary

garden path sentence

Syllables: gar·den path sen·tenceUK/ˈɡɑːdən pɑːθ ˈsɛntəns/US/ˈɡɑːɹdən pæθ ˈsɛntəns/

garden path sentence noun: a sentence that is easily parsed incorrectly when first read, due to the ambiguity of a word or words.

Noun

garden path sentence (plural garden path sentences)

  1. A sentence that is easily parsed incorrectly when first read, due to the ambiguity of a word or words.
    • Whether a particular construction causes a garden-path effect depends on the specific grammar of the language. For example, the famous example of an English garden-path sentence in (1) ["The horse raced past the barn fell"] would not exist if the past tense form of the verb race were not identical...1995, Reiko Mazuka, Kenji Itoh, “Can Japanese Speakers be Led down the Garden Path?”, in Reiko Mazuka, Noriko Nagai, editors, Japanese Sentence Processing, Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum...
    • One of the functions of punctuation is to reduce any ambiguity, and readers are less confused by garden-path sentences that are punctuated than by those that are not[…].2005, Michael W[illiam] Eysenck, Mark T. Keane, “Language Comprehension”, in Cognitive Psychology: A Student's Handbook, 5th edition, Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Press, →ISBN, page 362, column 1

Examples of garden path sentence in a sentence

  • [I]n a garden path sentence, we interpret a sentence in a particular way only to find out near the end that we misinterpreted it.2008, David W. Carroll, “Sentence Comprehension and Memory”, in Psychology of Language, 5th edition, Belmont, Calif.: Thomson Wadsworth...
  • A garden path sentence contains a temporary ambiguity[…].2013, Montserrat Sanz, Itziar Laka, Michael K. Tanenhaus, “Sentence Comprehension before and after 1970: Topics, Debates, and Techniques”...

Forms of garden path sentence

pluralgarden path sentences
alternative formgarden path
alternative formgarden-path sentence

Origin of garden path sentence

From the idiom lead someone up (or down) the garden path, because readers form an interpretation of the sentence which remains plausible until near the end of the sentence, at which point the readers realize that their interpretation cannot be right (they have been led up a garden path) and they must try another interpretation.

Questions about garden path sentence

What does garden path sentence mean?
Garden path sentence means a sentence that is easily parsed incorrectly when first read, due to the ambiguity of a word or words.
How do you use garden path sentence in a sentence?
[I]n a garden path sentence, we interpret a sentence in a particular way only to find out near the end that we misinterpreted it.
What part of speech is garden path sentence?
Garden path sentence is a noun.
How do you pronounce garden path sentence?
Garden path sentence is pronounced /ˈɡɑːdən pɑːθ ˈsɛntəns/ (UK).
What is the plural of garden path sentence?
The plural of garden path sentence is garden path sentences.

Words near garden path sentence in the dictionary

  1. garden office
  2. garden offices
  3. garden parties
  4. garden party
  5. garden path
  6. garden path sentence
  7. garden path sentences
  8. garden paths
  9. garden patience
  10. garden pea
  11. garden peas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: garden path sentence (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-garden path sentence.ogg.

Cite this entry: “garden path sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/garden_path_sentence. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.