Friday 20 January 2012

Buffalo

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

I like this sentence. It's perfectly grammatically correct, makes perfectly good sense (for a given value of 'sense'), and apparently it's the longest known antanaclasis in English. I expect you can infer from that what anatanaclasis means, but if you can discover what the sentence means without being told - and that includes googling (or otherwise fwseing) it - then I take my hat off to you, except I'm not wearing one.

Antanaclasis is rather fun - and I can't be the only one to think so because people have been making them up since at least Ancient Roman times, when someone came up with malo malo malo malo, which is some nonsense about fruit trees and naughty children.

Did you hear about the architect who had an obsession with elaborate groups of buildings?

2 comments :

  1. I didn't hear about that architect.

    Now I need to google this lol ;)

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