classic crash blossom (avant la lettre)

[Laurence Horn]

I just found this in my files, culled from one of Michael Quinion's
e-newsletters, back before we were displaying such examples under the
"crash blossom" banner.  (I suspect that what makes the garden path
more likely here is the preference for participial rather than
indicative syntax--or at least indicative syntax involving the
preterit--in headlinese.)

=============
WORLD WIDE WORDS           ISSUE 494           Saturday 1 July 2006

[thanks to] Anne O'Brien Lloyd, we learned that headlinese also struck the
Daily Mail on Thursday:
"Freed foreign prisoner murdered again".

How unlucky can a former prisoner get?
==============

LH

P.S.  Here's the actual story if anyone is keeping track:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-393201/Freed-foreign-prisoner-murdered-again.html

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org