Drinking rockets: the crash blossom for today
« previous post | next post »
The crash blossom of the day, at least here in the part of Scotland known as the Lothians, must surely be "Number of Lothian patients made ill by drinking rockets", in the Edinburgh Evening News today. Would you drink a rocket? I'm sure you would sensibly say it depends what the ingredients are. You wouldn't just down a rocket if I fixed one for you in the cocktail shaker, would you?
Only slowly, as one ploughs through the article looking for more details of these rocket beverages that have wrecked the health of so many in the Lothians, does it dawn on you that you have made a major mistake in syntactic analysis. Try making rocket the main verb instead.
[Hat tip: sharp-eyed Language Log reader Kenneth MacKenzie.]