Don’t trouble trouble until trouble troubles you

Dan links to one of the strangest, grammatically-correct sentences I’ve seen:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

I’m sure the meaning is perfectly clear. Well, there are three different uses of the word buffalo in that sentence, namely:

• c) The city of Buffalo, New York.
• a) The animal “buffalo”, in the plural (equivalent to “buffaloes”), in order to avoid articles.
• v) The verb “buffalo”, meaning to confuse, deceive, or intimidate.

So to parse this all out:

Buffalo(c) buffalo(a) Buffalo(c) buffalo(a) buffalo(v) buffalo(v) Buffalo(c) buffalo(a).

Or, in other words:

[Those] buffalo(es) from Buffalo [that are intimidated by] buffalo(es) from Buffalo intimidate buffalo(es) from Buffalo.

Weird stuff indeed. There’s a full Wikipedia entry will all this and much more here.

In other news, my Iowa Hawkeyes lost last night to the Ohio State Buckeyes on national television. As a member of the press, I got to stand by the sidelines and watch, which was a lot of fun even though the Hawks didn’t make it. They’re now 4-1 for the season.