crash blossom

People have been commenting on amusingly ambiguous headlines for many a decade so I am not sure why one particular example has given the class of such ambiguities a name.  The headline was:

Violinist Linked to JAL Crash Blossoms.

It was  published in Japan Today in 2009 and referred to Diana Yukawa, a violinist, whose father had died in a 1985 Japan Airlines crash.

Frequently the ambiguity arises because we read a verb as a noun, as in this case.  If you see blossoms as a verb and then link crash to JAL, all becomes clear.  Blossom as a noun has high frequency, blossom as a verb has a lower frequency, so the noun is the first to spring to mind. The result is that the headline is read as if crash blossoms is a compound noun with JAL as an adjective linked to crash blossoms.

In the English language we don’t have markers or inflections that would indicate a grammatical role. Combine this with the headline style in which sentences are compressed and linking words removed and there is trouble.  A normal sentence might have been A violinist linked to a JAL crash is blossoming.