French push bottles up German rear
- French push bottles up German rear
French push bottles up German rear is a celebrated, but apocryphal, ambiguous headline supposedly printed by a British newspaper during the First World War. [ [http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4342940,00.html Heads you win: The readers' editor on the art of the headline writer] ]
As intended by the writer, the headline suggests that a French attack had choked German supply lines, that is, ‘push’ is a noun and ‘bottles’ is a verb.
However, the headline can also be parsed construing ‘push’ as a verb and ‘bottles’ as a plural noun.
Life imitated art with a Second World War headline: "Eighth Army Push Bottles Up German Rear". [Fritz Spiegl "What The Papers Didn't Mean to Say" Scouse Press, Liverpool, 1965]
References
See also
*double entendre
Wikimedia Foundation.
2010.
Look at other dictionaries:
Syntactic ambiguity — For philosophical considerations of ambiguity, see ambiguity. Syntactic ambiguity is a property of sentences which may be reasonably interpreted in more than one way, or reasonably interpreted to mean more than one thing. Ambiguity may or may not … Wikipedia
Business and Industry Review — ▪ 1999 Introduction Overview Annual Average Rates of Growth of Manufacturing Output, 1980 97, Table Pattern of Output, 1994 97, Table Index Numbers of Production, Employment, and Productivity in Manufacturing Industries, Table (For Annual… … Universalium
arts, East Asian — Introduction music and visual and performing arts of China, Korea, and Japan. The literatures of these countries are covered in the articles Chinese literature, Korean literature, and Japanese literature. Some studies of East Asia… … Universalium
Focke-Wulf Fw 190 — infobox Aircraft name =Fw 190 type =Fighter manufacturer = Primarily Focke Wulf Flugzeugbau AG, but also Ago, Arado, Fieseler, Mimetall, Norddeutsche Dornier and others caption = Fw 190 A designer =Kurt Tank first flight =1 June 1939 introduced… … Wikipedia
Anthropology and Archaeology — ▪ 2009 Introduction Anthropology Among the key developments in 2008 in the field of physical anthropology was the discovery by a large interdisciplinary team of Spanish and American scientists in northern Spain of a partial mandible (lower… … Universalium
History of Wyandotte, Michigan — This article details the History of Wyandotte, Michigan. Wyandotte has a long history, dating back for hundreds of years.Early Native American presenceAround 1732, the Wyandot Indians (Native Americans) followed Antoine de Lamothe Cadillac and… … Wikipedia
Bicycle — For other uses, see Bicycle (disambiguation). A mountain bike, a popular multi use bicycle. A bicycle, also known as a bike, pushbike or cycle, is a human powered, pedal driven, single track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one… … Wikipedia
japan — japanner, n. /jeuh pan /, n., adj., v., japanned, japanning. n. 1. any of various hard, durable, black varnishes, originally from Japan, for coating wood, metal, or other surfaces. 2. work varnished and figured in the Japanese manner. 3. Japans,… … Universalium
Japan — /jeuh pan /, n. 1. a constitutional monarchy on a chain of islands off the E coast of Asia: main islands, Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku. 125,716,637; 141,529 sq. mi. (366,560 sq. km). Cap.: Tokyo. Japanese, Nihon, Nippon. 2. Sea of, the… … Universalium
Antoine Charles Louis Lasalle — General Antoine Charles Louis Collinet, comte de Lasalle (10 May, 1775 ndash; 6 July, 1809) was a French cavalry General during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars known as “The Hussar General.” He is regarded as the greatest light cavalry… … Wikipedia
