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Ambiguous Syntax
aka: Syntactic Ambiguity
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Wesley: I'm a rogue demon hunter now.
Cordelia: Wow... so, what's a rogue demon?
A simple statement becomes a bit of wordplay caused by an unclear use of a modifier. This is also known as a " syntactic ambiguity " or " squinting construction".
This typically occurs through the use of multiple nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc, in the same sentence, in such a way that it's difficult or even impossible to determine which adjective, verb, etc, applies to each noun. As a result, it's possible to interpret the sentence as having two or more meanings which are sufficiently different that the difference could potentially be very important to the reader or the plot. In some cases, there is only only one technically, grammatically, or logically correct interpretation, but it's so easy to misinterpret or mis-write that most people end up getting it wrong at first. In other cases, multiple interpretations are arguably grammatically correct.
In both Real Life and fiction, this is usually Played for Laughs, because the incorrect interpretation typically leads to an absurdity. A "man eating chicken" (note missing hyphen) seems to be an especially popular variant.
Another popular comedic variant is "You see this object here? When I nod my head, hit it as hard as you can."
On a more serious note, however, ambiguous syntax is sometimes used in false advertising so that the advertiser can claim they explained everything, and it was the consumer's fault for misinterpreting the statement. Likewise, in myth and legend, prophecy often includes ambiguous syntax, to make it more difficult to determine the exact details of a predicted event until it actually occurs. It is especially abused by the Literal Genie, to grant a wish in a way not intended by the speaker.
The Other Wiki lists more examples here. Note that this is easier to pull off in English than in most other languages, because English has neither grammatical genders (in French, for example, you would know that the feminine adjectives could only apply to the feminine noun) nor cases (in German, you would know that the dative adjectives could only apply to the indirect object of the sentence), leaving a lot more room for ambiguity.
Subtrope to Double Meaning. Compare Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma, Prophecy Twist, False Reassurance, Exact Words, Confusing Multiple Negatives and I Know You Know I Know.
Examples
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Advertising
- Invoked in an ad for Wolf Insurance; that is, an insurance company owned by a person named Wolf. It shows Little Red Riding Hood going through the forest when she hears some growling, and brandishes legal documents before continuing unmolested, "Wolf Insurance" here implying insurance against wolves.
Card Games
- Munchkin
- The "... Of Doom!" card, resulting in "Bow with Ribbons... of Doom!". The question came up whether it was the bow or the ribbons that were "of doom".
- Then add in to this the "...of my Grandfather" card from Munchkin Fu and you can have such gems as the "Big Black .45... of Doom... of my Grandfather" which leads one to think that the gun killed the grandfather. Or, in the other order: "Big Black .45... of my Grandfather... of Doom" brings up whether it's the gun or the grandfather that is "of doom".
- There's a famous story about the playtesting of the first Magic: The Gathering cards after game creator Richard Garfield had this exchange:
- It's still a Game Breaker, but for different reasons.
Comic Books
- Sometimes used as one of Roger the Dodger's scams in The Beano, such as selling tickets to see the "Man Eating Fish"...which turns out to be a man, eating fish (and chips).
- In one Captain Britain story featuring Captain Airstrip-One, an alternate Captain Britain who represents the Britain of Nineteen Eighty Four, Captain Airstrip-One is told by his superior to "imagine a boot stomping on a face forever." Captain Airstrip-One, who has no will of his own, happily obliges, but misinterprets the order — he thought he was meant to imagine that image forever, so he does, effectively making this mission his last.
- In a humorous Tom Strong story, Paul Saveen mentions once having a secret base in a "lost Eskimo mine." As he goes into detail it becomes clear that it wasn't a lost mine belonging to Eskimos, but rather a mine belonging to a lost Eskimo — it was under Death Valley. Poor guy was very lost.
- This one isn't so comical. In the Supreme Power version of Squadron Supreme, Dr. Emil Burbank relates to Inertia the story of a poor family in Iran: When a man's wife and daughter were raped by extremist soldiers, he killed them.
Inertia: The soldiers... all of them?
Burbank: No, of course not. He didn't kill the soldiers — he killed the women, because they had disgraced the family.
Films — Animation
Films — Live-Action
- In Bedknobs And Broomsticks, Eglantine is rummaging through her ingredients and pulls out "Poisoned Dragon's Liver." One of the children asks, "Did they poison the dragon, or just the liver?"
- From Mary Poppins: "I met a man with a wooden leg named Smith." "What was the name of his other leg?"
- Clue:
Mrs. White: ...he had threatened to kill me in public.
Miss Scarlet: Why would he want to kill you in public?
Wadsworth: I think she meant he threatened, in public, to kill her.
Colonel Mustard: Wadsworth, am I right in thinking there's nobody else in this house?
Wadsworth: Um... no.
Colonel Mustard: Then there is someone else in this house?
Wadsworth: Sorry, I said "no" meaning "yes."
Colonel Mustard: "No" meaning "yes?" Look, I want a straight answer, is there someone else, or isn't there, yes, or no?
Wadsworth: No.
Colonel Mustard: No there is, or no there isn't?
Wadsworth: Yes.
Mrs. White: (shatters glass) PLEASE!
- Lesbian Vampire Killers: a debate occurred on this very wiki wondered whether this movie would be about lesbians who killed vampires, lesbian vampires who were killers or people who killed lesbian vampires. It turned out to be both the first and third options.
- In the same vein, Ninja Assassin managed to accomplish this with only two words, as the trailers did not clarify whether the film was about a ninja who assassinates people, or people who assassinate ninja. (As it turned out, it was about both.)
- Eight Legged Freaks. The fact that the title is not hyphenated seems to mean that it could be read as "Eight freaks with legs", rather than "Freaks with eight legs".
- There's also this little exchange from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang:
Perry: I want you to picture a bullet inside your head right now. Can you do that for me?
Orderly: Fuck you. Anyway, that's ambiguous.
Perry: Ambiguous? No, I don't think so.
Harry: No, I think what he means is that when you say "Picture it inside your head" okay is that that a bullet will be inside your head? Or picture it IN your head?
Perry: Harry, will you shut up?
Harry: Well, he's got a point.
- The Little Rascals had a three foot man eating chicken in a freak show. It was one of the kids wearing a fake mustache, and eating from a bucket of chicken.
- Carnivale had the same joke, asking people to pay to see a "Man eating chicken," instead of a "Man-eating chicken."
- Airplane!
- One character is speaking of a "drinking problem" while narrating a flashback, and a second later we see he in fact meant a problem with his ability to drink, namely that he was spilling the whole glass on his face.
- Airplane used this trope for a lot of its humor:
Ted: It's an entirely different type of flying, altogether.
Dr. Rumack and Randy, in unison: It's an entirely different type of flying.
Dr. Rumack: This woman has to be gotten to a hospital.
Elaine: A hospital? What is it?
Dr. Rumack: It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now.
Hanging Lady: Nervous?
Ted: Yes.
Hanging Lady: First time?
Ted: No, I've been nervous lots of times.
- Some of these are repeated ad nauseum and it was awesome.
- Captain Spaulding's speech in Animal Crackers has two examples:
"One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I dunno."
"We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed. So we're going back again in a couple of weeks..."
- From The King's Speech:
Bertie: (telling a story to his daughters) This was very inconvenient for him, because he loved t-t-to hold his princesses in his arms. But you can't if you're a penguin, because y-you have wings, like herrings.
Margaret: Herrings don't have wings.
Bertie: Penguins have wings which are sh-sh-shaped like herrings.
- This famous exchange from Happy Gilmore sort of qualifies:
Shooter McGavin: You're in big trouble though, pal. I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast!
Happy Gilmore: (laughing) You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?
- In The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch skywrites "SURRENDER DOROTHY" above the Emerald City. Given that skywriting makes punctuation difficult, does she mean "Surrender, Dorothy" as in "Give up, Dorothy, it's pointless to resist"; or "Surrender Dorothy" as in, "People of the Emerald City, if you've taken Dorothy in, give her to me"? Or possibly both?
- In Universal Soldier, when Dolph Lungren thinks he's about to finish off Jean-Claude Van Damme, he says "say goodnight, asshole". Van Damme then surreptitiously injects himself with Phlebotinum and says "goodnight, asshole" and kicks Lungren's ass. Probably a Shout Out to the apocryphal George Burns and Gracie Allen "Say goodnight, Gracie" bit.
Gamebooks
- In a GrailQuest game book, you enter a room containing "a man eating plant". The next line informs you that the plant he's eating is a carrot.
Literature
- From The Elements of Style:
New York's first commercial human-sperm bank opened Friday with semen samples from eighteen men frozen in a stainless steel tank.
(...) In the lefthand version of the third example, the reader's heart goes out to those 18 poor fellows frozen in a steel tank.
- Panda: Eats, Shoots & Leaves.
- The Discworld book The Truth has a few jokes about not only ambiguous headlines, but trying to compensate for them, such as "Patrician Attacks Clerk With Knife (he had the knife, not the clerk)".
- In the same book, Mr. Tulip uses a phrase (via his Verbal Tic swearing) that is misinterpreted due to this:
Mr. Tulip: It's not a ——ing harpsichord, it's a ——ing virginal! One ——ing string to a note instead of two! So called because it was an instrument for ——ing young ladies!
Chair: My word, was it? I thought it was just a sort of early piano!
Mr. Pin: Meant to be played by young ladies.
- An earlier appearance of this particular Verbal Tic appears in Mort, as does another case of unclear syntax (this time via Literalist Snarking):
First Villain: Well, —— me. A ——ing wizard. I hate ——ing wizards.
Second Villain: You shouldn't —— them, then.
- In another book, Carrot describes a crowd of refugees as "mostly human." Vimes has to stop him and ask if that means that the crowd was mostly made up of humans, or that each person in the crowd was partly human.
- In Snuff a character says "I'm just a complicated chicken farmer!" By which he means he keeps complicated chickens.
- In Blindsight by Peter Watts, a linguist intentionally uses an extremely ambiguous sentence to determine whether she's talking to an actual person or a mere syntax engine.
- From The Fourth Bear:
"The other three orderlies who accompanied him are critical in the hospital."
"Critical?"
"Yes. Don't like the food, bed's uncomfortable, waiting list's too long. Usual crap."
- An entire scene in The Well of Lost Plots is built on this, when Thursday meets a man with a hat named Wilbur (or something like that.) The man is apparently cursed with bad syntax, and is constantly apologizing for it.
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
Ford: You'd better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace. It's unpleasantly like being drunk.
Arthur: What's so unpleasant about being drunk?
Ford: You ask a glass of water.
- King Pyrrhus is said to have consulted an oracle of the god Apollo about whether he should fight the Romans. Apollo advised him Aio te, Aeacida, Romanos vincere posse, (Ennius, Annales fr. 167). The sentence may be translated “I say, O son of Ajax, that you the Romans can conquer” –meaning either “You can conquer the Romans” or The Romans can conquer you”. (Cicero, De Divinatione ii. 56, § 116, remarked that it was odd that Apollo should speak in Latin.) This makes it Older Than Feudalism. The line became a proverbial example of amphiboly (ambiguous grammatical structure), and is quoted as such by Shakespeare (Henry VI, Part 2, I. iv. 62).
- Lemony Snicket The Unauthorized Autobiography, supplementary material for A Series of Unfortunate Events, contains many ambiguous sentences. Most notably, a photograph of a baby labeled "Who took this?"note To clarify: the picture had been shot, and the baby in the picture had been kidnapped.
- In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka at one point introduces a new creation of his, "Square candies that look round." Once he and the others enter the room, a stack of square-shaped candies with little faces on them turn to face them. In other words, they looked 'round.
- In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Hagrid purchases a "flesh-eating slug repellent". (It's confirmed elsewhere in the series, however, that it's the slug which is flesh-eating, not the repellent.)
- In Rogue Squadron, Corran Horn is flying with a randomized flight program while broadcasting a beacon that allows a set of proton torpedoes to follow him toward a target (It Makes Sense in Context). Most of the torpedoes hit the target, but one set that was fired late didn't, and continued to follow him. Horn, struggling to evade the torpedoes with the randomized flight program, tells his astromech Whistler to "cut it out". Corran meant the flight program; Whistler instead opted to "cut out" the beacon. It worked out, though Corran got a bit of a scare.
- In Gardens Of The Moon, the first book in Malazan Book Of The Fallen, a character named Sorry is asked for her name. When she replies truthfully, the other party shrugs it off as a case of amnesia. Sorry doesn't bother to correct him.
Live-Action TV
- Boy Meets World:
Topanga: And we're living in an apartment where a guy was shot over a salad, part of which was still stuck on the wall!
Angela: ...the guy or the salad?
Topanga: I don't know. I ate it anyway.
- In an episode of The Latest Buzz, a psychic tells Michael that he will encounter "a 6-foot man eating chicken". He then sees his teacher, who is 6 feet tall, eating chicken and becomes convinced that the psychic is genuine.
- Monk, episode "Mr. Monk on Wheels":
Captain Leland Stottlemeyer: [after Vince knocks over the microphone on the interrogation room tape recorder] Hmm, tough guy, ehh? [shows a bullet in an evidence bag] Look at this. See that? That's a bullet. That's a bullet that got dug out of our very dear friend's leg tonight!
Lt. Randy Disher: That makes your cousin a former cop shooter.
Vince Kuramoto: Former what?
Lt. Randy Disher: Former cop shooter.
Vince Kuramoto: You mean he used to shoot cops?
Lt. Randy Disher: No. He shot someone who used to be a cop.
Vince Kuramoto: Why didn't you say that?
Lt. Randy Disher: I did. It's the same thing.
Vince Kuramoto: It's not the same thing at all! It's not even close!
Captain Leland Stottlemeyer: Oh for God's sakes! What are you two, married or what?! Look, it's not complicated, Vince! If you know where your cousin is and you're not telling us, [points a finger at Vince] that makes you an accessory after the fact.
Lt. Randy Disher: For aiding and abetting!
Captain Leland Stottlemeyer: For attempted murder, which is a very, very, VERY long "goodbye"!
- In "Mr. Monk Makes the Playoffs", Bob Costas asks Stottlemeyer if Monk's told him about the way they met. Stottlemeyer says all he knows is that involved something about a demented cat salesman. Costas then clarifies: the cat salesman was not demented, he sold demented cats, like a calico kitten that was psychotic, and other cats that had multiple personalities.
- This is the entire point of the classic Saturday Night Live sketch "Robot Repair."
- A Saturday Night Live skit, wherein Ed Asner tells Julia Louis-Dreyfus first "You can never put too much water in a nuclear reactor," and ends with "You can never stare too long at a mushroom cloud."
- On an episode of Carnivàle, Stumpy did a spiel promising to show "the fearsome Man Eating Chicken." When the curtain was pulled aside, another carny was sitting at a table, eating... well, you can guess.
- Was the carny in question fearsome?
- An episode of Perfect Strangers has Larry and Balki trying to fix the plumbing in their apartment.
Larry (holding pipe): Now, when I nod my head, you hit it with the hammer.
- On one episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, there was some discussion as to the meaning of the title of the movie: Teen-Age Strangler. There was a strangler, but it wasn't a teenager. And not all of the victims of the strangler were Teen-Age girls. So why is it titled Teen-Age Strangler?
- Jokes based on this are part of Aaron Sorkin's Signature Style. From The West Wing:
Abbey: Women talk about their husbands overshadowing their careers — mine got eaten.
C.J.: Your husband got eaten?
Abbey: My career.
C.J.: Yeah, well, I'm on dangling-modifier patrol.
- When Wesley first showed up on Angel, he announced that he had become a rogue demon hunter. Cordelia's response: "What's a rogue demon?"
- The Angel roleplaying game introduces a rogue demon hunter character type, who is in fact a rogue demon, who hunts other demons, thus technically making her a "rogue demon demon hunter".
- In an episode of I Love Lucy, there was a comedic stage show featuring a "Man Eating Tiger"; Ricky holding a tiny, edible model tiger and taking a bite out of it.
- Monty Python's Flying Circus: "Next week, part 2: Biggles Flies Undone."note Or is that "Biggles' Fly's Undone"?
- In one of the Event sketches on That Mitchell And Webb Look, the announcer introduces the contestants as "Peter, who you may remember; and Sheila, who you're also permitted to remember."
- Open All Hours:
Arkwright (reading newspaper): "The police are looking for a small man with one eye". If he's that small, you'd think they'd use both eyes!
- Paul Merton likes to use this trope on Have I Got News for You. For example, when he was asked to complete the headline "(BLANK) flies off without warning", he suggested "Spider scares..." and "Clinton's...".
- In Blackadder Goes Forth, Bob Parkhurst disguises herself as a man because she "want[s] to see how a war is fought so badly." Edmund informs her that she has come to the right place, as the war is being fought very badly indeed.
- Blackadder also gives us "Say thank you, Baldrick" "Thank you Baldrick"
- Doctor Who has a pretty good one: "Demon's Run — When a good man goes to War" versus "Demons run when a good man goes to war".
- The Prisoner uses Number 2's odd, stilted syntax to hide something that, were it written down properly punctuated, would give away the premise of the series.
Number 6: Who is Number 1?
Number 2: You are, Number 6.
- In an episode of Kate And Ally, Ally finds an envelop on the sidewalk. When she opens it, she announces, "It contains five hundred dollar bills!" Kate asks, "Is that five hundred dollar bills, or five hundred-dollar bills, or an unspecified number of five-hundred dollar bills?" (It's the third option, specifically $5000 in $500-dollar bills.)
- An episode of Hey Dude featured Buddy trying to prove that hypnosis works by hypnotizing Jake, who is eating a bowl of cereal, into pouring the cereal over his head. Meaning Buddy wants the cereal on Jake's head, not his own. Jake plays along just so he can abuse this trope, along with Pronoun Trouble:
Buddy: I want you to pour the cereal over your head.
(Later Buddy tries to correct this)
Jake: Must pour cereal...over...over...
Buddy: My head, over my head.
Jake: (Dumps cereal on Buddy)
- Dr. Fishman in Arrested Development has a habit of making ambiguous statements about patients' conditions. He tells the Bluths who think George Sr. is critically ill following a heart attack that they "lost him" and he "got away from us" (actually meaning that he escaped after faking the symptoms in order to break out of jail), and that Buster is going to be "all right" (because his left hand was bitten off). There's also the meta-example of the twist that was alluded to from the beginning of the show George-Michael's cousin, maybe, Maeby.
- In one episode of The X-Files, a supposed psychic claimed he'd die in bed with Scully. He ended up dying in a hospital bed, with Scully in the same room.
- One episode of Scrubs has Gooch threaten to smash Turk's face in with her ukelele until it's in a million pieces. She doesn't say whether his face or the ukelele would be the one in pieces.
- In an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun, Harry has gotten Easy Amnesia and forgotten he's an alien, but finds out the others are aliens and becomes paranoid about them:
Sally: Come on, let's eat, Harry.
Harry: Did you just say, "let's eat Harry"?
Sally: Yeah, we're hungry, so it's time to eat, Harry.
Harry: "Eat Harry". I see. [beat] Could I just have a moment?
Sally: Whatever. [leaves]
Tommy: [enters] Will you hurry it up, I'm starving!
- In the Parks and Recreation episode in which Ben and Leslie get married, Andy sees Leslie in her wedding dress:
Andy: Oh my God, I'm not supposed to see you before the wedding!
April: Andy, that's the groom.
Andy: Oh no, I saw him too!
Music
- 'A one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater'. This early (1950s!) music video makes it clear that the 'correct' interpretation was a one-eyed, one-horned, flying eater of purple people, but it's impossible to tell from the title of the song alone.
- This is also clarified in the song itself with the exchange
''I said, "Mr. Purple People Eater, what's your line?"
''He said "Eating purple people, and it sure is fine."
- Ray Stevens' "Little League":
I remember batting practice — I put a baseball on a string
And I told this kid, "When I nod my head, haul off and hit that thing!"
Heh, gotta give him credit; he did exactly what I said
Cuz the second that I nodded... HE HIT ME IN THE HEAD!
- "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Jurassic Park" has the line "A huge Tyrannosaurus ate our lawyer/Well I suppose that proves/They're really not all bad." The ambiguity is whether the T-Rex isn't all bad, for disposing of a lawyer, or the lawyer isn't all bad, either for providing sustenance/another target, or in the "not un-tasty" sense. Al says he left it ambiguous on purpose.
- There used to be a quiz you could take on his website. One of the questions asked which of the following sentences is ambiguous. The correct answer was "I was driving down the freeway with a rabid wolverine in my underwear." Is there a rabid wolverine stuffed down Al's pants, or is Al sharing a car with a wolverine who's wearing his underwear?
- Mike Doughty's "Rising Sign" includes the deliberately ambiguous line "I resent the way you make me like myself". "Like" can be read as a verb or a preposition in the context, so it could mean either "I resent that you make me feel good about myself" or "I resent that you make me act in a way characteristic of myself".
- The last verse of The Kinks' "Lola" ends in "...I'm glad I'm a man and so is Lola". This could either mean that the naive narrator never found out that Lola was a man at all ("Lola and I are both glad that I am a man"), or that he did eventually figure it out and just doesn't mind ("I'm glad that Lola and I are both men").
- One that's troubled generations of children: "There was a farmer had a dog, and Bingo was his name-o." More dogs than farmers are named Bingo, but you never know.
- Danish band Mew named one of their albums "And The Glass Handed Kites"...so, is it a group of kites with glass hands or a glass that gave kites?
Newspapers
- Another ambiguous headline featuring this trope: "Man Eating Piranha Accidentally Sold as Pet Fish". Actually, probably most ambiguous headlines would qualify, depending on how loosely we define the trope. They're even more vulnerable to it than normal sentences due to omitting lots of grammatical features. The professionals call these crash blossoms.
- The actual origin is from a headline Violinist linked to JAL crash blossomsnote Meaning that a violinist was both linked to the Japan Airlines crash - her father died in it - and has had her career prosper or 'blossom'.
- Also an example of why attention to punctuation is important. The headline would not be ambiguous if "man-eating" were hyphenated.
- Some other notable crash blossoms are "Iraqi Head Seeks Arms" and "Police Help Dog Bite Victim."
- When Ike Turner died, the New York Post failed to resist the temptation to run the headline "Ike Beats Tina to Death."
- Robert Ripley, an American columnist, once wrote the supposed origin of the phrase "Pardon impossible. To be sent to Siberia", the meaning of which flips if the period is moved to become "Pardon. Impossible to be sent to Siberia".
- Newspaper headlines are particularly vulnerable to this due to pressures of space requiring all words that seem superfluous to be removed. Another issue is the (especially British) newspaper tendency to build up absurd compound nouns referring back to previous stories: Buried Alive Fiance Gets 20 Years in Prisonnote He wasn't buried alive; he was the fiance involved in the 'buried alive' case - that is, he buried his fiancee alive, Sex Quiz Cricket Ace in Hotel Suicide Leapnote "Sex Quiz Cricket Ace" is the subject - a 'cricket ace' being investigated by police for possible sex crimes - at least until he killed himself by leaping from a hotel balcony, Whip rules furore claims first victimnote The "Whip rules furore" - the controversy caused by new rules on whipping in horse racing - has claimed its first victim - someone resigned.
Newspaper Comics
- Used in Dilbert, where an investment adviser describes a strategy in which his lawyers put the money in little bags and trained dogs bury them around town. He is asked whether they bury the bags or the lawyers, and replies that they've tried it both ways.
- Another Dilbert example involved Ratbert having a cat trying to eat his head. Dogbert proposed a solution to Bob the Dinosaur: "I'll yank the cat off Ratbert's head, and you stomp on it." The next panel had Ratbert under Bob's foot and Dogbert saying, "In retrospect, I could have phrased that better."
- There's a comic strip somewhere with a guy charging money to see a "Man Eating Chicken". Surprise, surprise, after the people had paid, they just ended up seeing an ordinary guy on a stage eating fried chicken from a bucket.
Puzzles
- "In Kansas, you cannot take a picture of a man with a wooden leg. Why?" Answer: You can't take a picture of a man with a wooden leg anywhere, you have to use a camera!
- You have two U.S. coins that add up to thirty cents, and one of them is not a nickel. One of them is a nickel; the other one is not a nickel, it's a quarter.
Radio
- The Goon Show did a subversion of the old "when I nod my head, hit it" gag in the 1950s.
Neddie: There, that did it! (To audience) Hands up all those who though I was gonna hit him on the nut.
- This, from an episode of Hello Cheeky.
Tim: Barry, turn the radio on.
Barry: Certainly. (lecherously) Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are? Oh, I want to stick my tongue in your aerial socket—
Tim: ...I meant switch it on.
Barry: Well, that's no fun.
Barry: I think I met your aunt, once.
Tim: ...I don't have an aunt Once. Once is a very silly name for an aunt. I did have an uncle, however...
Barry: However's a very silly name for an uncle!
Tabletop Games
- In the RPG magazine Shadis, there was a puzzle-filled scenario that at one point featured a sign saying "DANGER! Man eating flowers!" Following the path would lead the characters to, what else, a man who was eating flowers. What many players would at this point fail to realize was that there was also danger.
- Forgotten Realms has an in-universe example with punctuation: one of the many, many prophecies floating around there either (in the standard translation) says dragons will rule the world or (in Sammaster's translation) says dead dragons will rule the world, depending on when a sentence starts. Note that while Sammaster's translation is rejected by the modern scholarship (in no small part likely because Sammaster ended up going completely crazy and tried to fulfill the prophecy), it is consistently indicated to be a mistake you could easily make.
Theater
- Groucho Marx's famous line "I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I don't know."
- And his "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
- "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."
- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is full of this. Possibly the best example:
The Player: The old man thinks he's in love with his daughter.
Rosencrantz: Good God. We're out of our depths here.
The Player: No, no, no! He hasn't got a daughter! The old man thinks he's in love with his daughter.
Rosencrantz: The old man is?
The Player: Hamlet... in love... with the old man's daughter... the old man... thinks.
Rosencrantz: Ah.
- In the play A Village Fable, it's unclear whether the notorious Six-Fingered Man has three fingers on each hand or a total of 12.
- During a standup routine, Zach Galifianakis cited the importance on how you say things.
Zach: *Solemnly* She had a crack-baby. *Beat, then enthusiastically* She had a crack, baby!
Video Games
Web Comics
- Dinosaur Comics: T-Rex riffs on a classic example (known as a garden-path sentence): "The horse raced past the barn fell".
- The Order of the Stick uses a similar garden-path sentence early on in its first arc: "When the goat turns red strikes true."
- Also when Thog (who pays no heed to grammar and often skips verbs) tries to explain that Nale stuck his goatee to his twin brother Elan so he'd end up in jail in his place:
Thog: not nale, not-nale. and thog knot not-nale while nale nail not-nale. nale, not not-nale, now nail not-nale by leaving not-nale, not nale, in jail.
Police officer: Pleading insanity, then?
- Used cunningly in this Stolen Pixels, lampooning Tabula Rasa:
"Anyway, hope you and little Jim are well. Send some chocolate or some pornography! The Forean stuff we have here just isn't doing it for us."
- The title of Demon Eater is another "both" example: Saturno is a demon who eats, and an eater of demons.
- In the Punyverse arc of Sluggy Freelance, after the transport that Torg and Riff are on leaves the planet, Lord Grater's men destroy the planet. Why? Because Lord Grater told them if any ship escaped the planet, they were to destroy it immediately. Cue Face Palm.
- Partially Clips has this comic, of the missing-hyphen variety. What makes it funny is that the person in question deliberately misinterprets the sentence to make a point about grammar, despite the very clear intended meaning.
- xkcd's Hyphen and Jacket.
- This Cyanide & Happiness shows the importance of antecedents in Freudian psychology.
Web Original
- TV Tropes itself has a few, many of which are chronicled in "I Thought It Meant..." For example, a Serial Killer Killer: A killer of serial killers, or a serial killer of killers? (Both, more often then not).
Jesus, Lucy, Violet, and Patty are CRUEL to poor Charlie Brown! They expect him to get an over-commercialized tree, made of pink aluminum? Charlie brings back a tree that looks like one that would be next to the humble manger, and they all laugh at him! Even damned SNOOPY! Although it sets up a Crowning Moment Of Awesome with the "That's what Christmas is all about" speech, I just want to wring those three bitches' neck!!
Is it bad that I read the start of this entry as a list of 4 names, rather than an expletive and 3 names?
Jesus is laughing at Charlie Brown for having a great Christmas spirit! The irony!
Nope. I did it, too. As did my parents, Ayn Rand and God.
Your parents are Ayn Rand and God?
- The SCP Foundation has a "Six-Foot-Tall Man Eating Chicken." The SCP object is described as follows: "SCP-3467 is a six (6) foot tall, two hundred (200) pound man eating chicken. Subject is thirty five (35), slightly balding, dark brown hair and eyes, and slightly overweight. Name is Hank __________, and he has worked as a Level 1 cleanup crew for the past three years. Hank is never seen without a bucket of chicken, and only stops eating it when actually working, which is a rare occurrence in itself."
Western Animation
Real Life
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