{"id":484,"date":"2018-05-08T21:10:20","date_gmt":"2018-05-08T21:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/?p=484"},"modified":"2018-05-08T23:07:53","modified_gmt":"2018-05-08T23:07:53","slug":"animals-which-are-also-transitive-verbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/2018\/05\/08\/animals-which-are-also-transitive-verbs\/","title":{"rendered":"Animals which are also transitive verbs"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a recent conversation with Cristyn, we somehow came to be talking about the sentence: Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This sentence, sometimes with a couple of extra “Buffalo”, is often used as an example of a grammatical sentence which is hard to parse.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> In a less perplexing form, it says: Bison whom bison baffle\u2014 they themselves baffle bison.<\/em><\/p>\n

Part of the trick is that “buffalo” is both singular and plural, but the core of it is that the name of the animal is also a transitive verb.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> So she suggested a pleasant variant: Badgers badgers badger badger badgers<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This got us to brainstorming animals which are transitive verbs. To buffalo<\/em> and to badger<\/em>, but also to dog<\/em>, to hound<\/em>, to cow<\/em>,\u00a0to ape<\/em>, to parrot<\/em>, to duck<\/em>, and to goose<\/em>.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The pluralization is trickier for some of these, as in: Geese geese goose goose geese<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Are there any others we missed?<\/p>\n

\"\"
It might baffle its fellows at any time. (Photo by Jack Dykinga, via Wikimedia Commons.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent conversation with Cristyn, we somehow came to be talking about the sentence: Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo. This sentence, sometimes with a couple of extra “Buffalo”, is often used as an example of a grammatical sentence which is hard to parse. In a less perplexing form, it says: Bison whom bison baffle\u2014 … Continue reading “Animals which are also transitive verbs”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-et-cetera"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7PjAo-7O","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":489,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}