A Shitload Of Buffalos

The other morning, The Historian exclaimed, "Did you know that you can write a sentence just using the word 'buffalo'?" And indeed, she is right! Well, mostly. The sentence in question is as follows:

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."

To the untrained eye, it looks like the word "buffalo," written eight times, with some random capitalization thrown in for fun. But this sentence has an actual meaning!

First, you have to consider the fact that in the above sentence, "buffalo" acts as different parts of speech:

1. Noun (the large hairy animal, most likely referring to the American Bison)
2. Adjective (referring to someone or something hailing from Buffalo, a city in eastern New York which is dangerously close to Canada)
3. Verb (meaning "to intimidate by a display of power").
So looking at the sentence again, we have "Buffalo (adj) buffalo (n) Buffalo (adj) buffalo (n) buffalo (v) buffalo (v) Buffalo (adj) buffalo (n)."

Keeping this in mind, the sentence should be understood as follows (using some synonyms to reduce ambiguity): "Bison from Buffalo, whom bison from Buffalo intimidate, are intimidated by bison from Buffalo." See? Simple!

So technically, that is a grammatically correct sentence, although the meaning is highly ambiguous due to its construction and lack of punctuation or articles. Nevertheless, it has a real meaning, although the sentence would probably make a high school English teacher cry.

For further disambiguation, read the Wikipedia article on the "buffalo" sentence. And if your brain still hurts, just watch this and forget all of your problems!

-The Cunning Linguist