Language Log

On Headsup: The Blog, FEV (Fred Vultee) notes a remarkable confluence of nouns (and one adjective) on the front page of Sunday's New York Post:

A rare seven word BBC News headline noun pile sighting: "Emma West Croydon tram race rant woman sentenced", BBC News 7/1/2013: A woman who was filmed shouting racist abuse on a London tram in a video watched by 11 million people has been given a community sentence. Emma West, 36, of New Addington, admitted racially-aggravated […]

Noun pile? Crash Blossom?  We report, you decide… Rollin Bishop, "Quest for Giant Bomb E3 Set Porn Bears Fruit", 6/24/2013: The Electronic Entertainment Expo — E3 for short — is held in Los Angeles every year, typically in June, and it means that a lot of journalists descend upon the area in short order. This […]

Last week, I came across what I thought was an artful headline in my local paper (Calgary Herald; 03/21/1012): Police looking into death by Balzac What reader wouldn't be lured into dipping further into this article, into wondering what human tragedy or comedy awaits in the finer print? Are we to be treated to the […]

Josh Fruhlinger sends along a sublime crash blossom from BBC News: "Dog helps lightning strike Redruth mayor." Requisite screenshot in case it changes:

The crash blossom of the day comes to us from Rebekah Macdonald via Twitter. This headline appeared on the New Zealand news site Stuff.co.nz: Police chase driver in hospital Of course, the police didn't chase a driver in a hospital, like some wacky action movie sequence. The subject of the headline is "police chase driver," […]

A few days ago, Fev at Headsup: The Blog posted about the "Hed noun pileup of the morning", namely "Texting death crash peer jailed". His link actually points to a BBC News story whose headline now reads "Peer jailed for motorway texting". All the same, Fev's larger point seems to be exactly right: "American hed […]