escher sentence
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.39 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
14
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A sentence which initially seems acceptable (grammatical and parseable), but upon inspection is nonsensical.
Example Sentences
- "Escher sentences are extremely rare. One or two examples have circulated in the linguistics blogs, with minor lexical mutations, but no one has come up with an example culled from text or even from spontaneous spoken conversation. […] Unlike Escher sentences, most expressions do not cause such a clash between immediate and more reflective judgements."
- "[…"
- "Whimsical Warbler: Why should we vote? I propose a dictatorship and nominate myself as dictator, since less birds have as much authority in this archipelago than I have. 'a confused pause ensues as the entire audience, speakers, and Chair slowly tried to parse that phrase' Single-Shot Sicklebill: Did you dare to heckle me with an Escher sentence? Away with you, you scoundrel!"