Thursday, February 28, 2008

buffalo?

just encountered the following sentence for the first time:

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."

it makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever, but there is an almost coherent explanation on this wiki page.

basically, with the understanding that there are three meanings to the word 'buffalo' in the sentence, i.e., buffalo a city, buffalo an animal; and buffalo a verb meaning to bully, confuse, deceive or intimidate, then one may derive the following meaning:

"the sentence when parsed reads as a description of the pecking order in the social hierarchy of buffaloes living in Buffalo:
[Those] (Buffalo buffalo) [whom] (Buffalo buffalo buffalo) buffalo (Buffalo buffalo).
[Those] buffalo(es) from Buffalo [that are intimidated by] buffalo(es) from Buffalo intimidate buffalo(es) from Buffalo.
or
Bison from Buffalo, New York who are intimidated by other bison in their community also happen to intimidate other bison in their community."

get it?

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