25 November 2024
A crash blossom is a poorly worded headline that can be read in more than one way. In most of the common examples one of the readings is humorous. (Non-humorous crash blossoms aren’t usually selected as examples, presumably because they’re not exciting enough.) An example of a crash blossom can be seen in this Associated Press headline from 23 September 2009:
McDonald’s fries the holy grail for potato farmers
Here the word fries can be read as either a noun (the way it was intended to be read) or as a verb, the crash blossom. The article is about how farmers desire a contract to supply McDonald’s with potatoes, not that they are dropping a sacred chalice into a vat of boiling fat.
Or there is this one from the New York Times of 10 March 2011:
Qaddafi Forces Bear Down on Strategic Town as Rebels Flee
Again, we see the noun-verb confusion with the word bear. Crash blossoms are the headline equivalent of what in ordinary prose are called garden-path sentences, sentences that readers think will lead them one place when they start, but end up in another place else altogether.
Other crash blossoms occur from missing context, such as this one from Loudwire of 10 September 2017:
Decapitated Members Arrested on Alleged Kidnapping Charges
Here one must know that Decapitated is the name of a rock band in order to understand the intended meaning.
In other cases, the clipped style of headlines elides words that are needed to fully grasp the situation, as in this one from the Huffpost of 12 November 2020:
Lawyers For Mentally Ill Woman Set To Be Executed By U.S. Contract Coronovirus
—Huffpost, 12 November 2020
If the headline had read Lawyers for Mentally Ill Woman Who Is Set to Be Executed the crash blossom would have been avoided.
The name crash blossom was inspired by an August 2009 headline in Japan Today that read:
Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms
Readers wondered what a crash blossom was, but the story is about violinist Diana Yukawa, who achieved professional success in the aftermath of a 1985 Japan Airlines crash that took her father’s life. Some posters on the Testy Copy Editors internet discussion forum dubbed such headlines crash blossoms, and the name stuck.
Crash blossom joins such terms as Cupertino (an off-the-wall spell checker suggestion, as in Cupertino for the common typo cooperatino, after Cupertino, California, home to Apple Computer—which explains why an obscure place name is in the software as an approved spelling); eggcorn (a misinterpretation of a spoken word); snowclone (a stock phrase that is varied to fit a particular context, as in X is the new Y); and mondegreen (a misinterpreted song lyric).
While the term crash blossom is relatively new, the phenomenon is not. Crash blossoms have been blooming for as long as headlines have carried their distinctive, clipped style. But beware many lists of crash blossoms. Many of the examples are fictitious. My favorite is British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands, but alas I have seen no evidence that this headline was actually printed in a newspaper. Why people think they need to make such things up when there are so many true examples is a mystery, but that’s the world we live in.
Also, don’t assign the blame for a crash blossom to the article’s reporter. In most news organizations the articles and the headlines are written by different people. Also, one suspects that not all crash blossoms are mistakes. Editors have senses of humor, too.
Sources:
Carey, Stan, “BBC Crash Blossom: Girl Murders Car,” Sentence First, September 2012.
“Decapitated Members Arrested on Alleged Kidnapping Charges.” Loudwire, 10 September 2017.
“Lawyers For Mentally Ill Woman Set To Be Executed By U.S. Contract Coronovirus.” Huffpost, 12 November 2020.
McIntyre, John. “Now we have a term for it.” You Don’t Say (blog), 26 August 2009.
Miller, John / Associated Press. “McDonald’s Fries the Holy Grail for Potato Farmers.” Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Washington), 23 September 2009.
Shadid, Anthony. “Qaddafi Forces Bear Down on Strategic Town as Rebels Flee.” New York Times, 10 March 2011.
Zimmer, Ben. “On Language: Crash Blossoms,” New York Times, 27 January 2010.
Image credit: AP Photo/Charlie Litchfield, 2009. Fair use of a copyrighted image to illustrate the topic under discussion.