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“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”

According to William Rappaport, a linguistics professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo (naturally), the word “Buffalo,” eight times in a row — is a legitimate, grammatically valid sentence.

Really. Click the above link to go to the page explaining the whole history of how he discovered the sentence.  Basically, it works like this:

“Buffalo,” with a capital “B,” refers to the area of Buffalo, New York.

“buffalo,” with a lower-case “b,” can be a noun meaning “bison” or a verb meaning “intimidate”

But, as Rappaport and his colleagues kept working on the sentence, they realized that if the style of intimidation called “buffalo” is specific to Buffalo, NY, then it can be referred to as “Buffalo buffalo”.

Think of it this way – if you dance the waltz that was created for the song The Tennessee Waltz, then you are “Tennessee Waltzing”. If you intimidate someone the same way they do in Buffalo NY, you are “Buffalo buffaloing”. But because of the verb tense, it just becomes “Buffalo buffalo”.

(Remember that song “Buffalo Stance” by Neneh Cherry? It makes a lot more sense now!)

Adding a few words to clarify, you get:

“Bison from Buffalo, NY, which other bison from Buffalo, NY intimidate, also intimidate (even other) bison from Buffalo, NY.”

I found it made more sense if I put commas in the sentence, put “NY” after the city name, use the word intimidate instead of ‘buffalo’ , and kept the noun and verb in lower-case and the city in Upper-case -

“Buffalo buffalo, Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”

(Buffalo NY buffalo), (that Buffalo NY buffalo intimidate), (intimidate other Buffalo NY buffalo).

So, does it make more sense now? Or does your head hurt? Sorry about that! I just think it’s so cool the way the words work!

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