What is the Weirdest Sentence in English? - IsAccurate (2024)

Blog

What Is the Weirdest Sentence to Ever Exist in English?

July 30, 2020

Author: Mark Blackwood, follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Ever wondered what is the weirdest sentence in the English language? There are many long or funny words in vocabulary which can sound strange. They can form the weirdest, most tangled sentences because of English grammar. The English language can be confusing and complex at times because the meaning of sentences can depend on the comma, function words, word emphasis, and hom*ophones. In this article, we will show you 10 funniest, craziest, and weirdest sentences of the English language.

Top 10 Weird Grammatically Correct Sentences

10. I never said she stole my money.

At first glance, there is nothing special about this sentence. However, try putting emphasis each time on different words, and you will see how its meaning can change radically. There are many phrases like this, but the one above is one of the most popular and strange sentences. Let’s look at how it works:

• I never said she stole my money. - but somebody did.
• I never said she stole my money. - I just did not say it.
• I never said she stole my money. - but I could hint on it.
• I never said she stole my money. - that wasn’t she!
• I never said she stole my money. - she could have hidden it.
• I never said she stole my money. - someone else’s money is gone.

9. This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God.

Here is another one example among weird English sentences. You can read this sentence twofold. There is no Oxford comma, but you can still put an imaginary comma before “and.” In this case, there would be nothing weird with this sentence. However, if you consider there’s no comma there, it would look like the author’s parents are Ayn Rand and God! This is called syntactic ambiguity, which is pretty widespread in the English language. You may even try and create such a sentence by yourself because this is pretty easy to do if you follow an example.

Useful information: A list of 10 best healthcare translation services of 2023.

8. Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.

This sentence starts just fine, and by the end, turns into one of those crazy English sentences that make sense. When you first read this phrase, you may wonder how a fruit may fly like a banana and why would it. Only in the second reading, we can see that small insects called fruit flies like eating a banana. The final question is, are there any insects called “time flies” which enjoy arrows?

7. One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas; how he got into my pajamas, I’ll never know.

To understand this sentence, you’ll have to go back to its beginning. This witty joke was coined by Groucho Marx, and now is one of the tricky sentences in English. It has the wordplay around the phrase “in my pajamas.” The first meaning is that, with my pajamas on, I can shoot an elephant. The other goes like an elephant can wear my pajamas and I can shoot him at that moment. This interesting sentence is an example of how the human brain can group different words in the sentence and create new meanings.

6. A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.

Here, you can see an excellent example of phonetic play. The thing is, -ough can have different pronunciation in the English language. The accurate pronunciation of some English words is hard to get when you look at them. Some linguists even joke that there are too many weird English rules of pronunciation, and there are as many exceptions. The sentence above illustrates the saying because there are nine versions of reading of -ough. Google or Youtube this sentence and listen to its pronunciation. You will see that all words with -ough sound differently.

5. This exceeding trifling witling, considering ranting criticizing concerning adopting fitting wording being exhibiting transcending learning, was displaying, notwithstanding ridiculing, surpassing boasting swelling reasoning, respecting correcting erring writing, and touching detecting deceiving arguing during debating.

This is probably the most confusing sentence ever. This sentence represents an amazing English language ability to add “ing” to the end of words and form nouns, adjectives, or verbs, depending on the context. All of the words in the sentence above have an “ -ing” ending, except “this,” “and,” and “was.” This sentence was originally found in a grammar book from the 19th century. Perhaps, the creator wanted to explore how many -ing’s they can put in one sentence. Despite this sentence looks superfluous and overly cluttered with “-ing” ending words, it has a clear and distinct meaning. Here it goes: “This very annoying grammarian who thought that lengthy remarks about the correct word use are a sign of transcendent education, was at the same time displaying, despite his ridicule, a very boastful argument about the correction of a false syntax, and false arguments in the course of debates.”

Read also: USCIS translation for your immigration needs.

4. All the faith he had had had had no effect on the outcome of his life.

At first glance, this seems like one of the sentences that make no sense. However, English is full of syntactically ambiguous sentences that still cater to the rules of the English language. For example, a modifying phrase can relate to more than one noun at a time. Often, polysemy and hom*onymy mix the sentence up, or there is no comma to guide the way. In the case of the sentence above, there is a past perfect tense misuse which is still grammatically valid. “Had” may be both an auxiliary verb and the main verb, so some of the “had’s” make sense and some of them are just function words. The first and third “had” are auxiliary, and the rest are main. So, the sentence can be paraphrased like that: “Before, he had a lot of faith, but it did not influence the outcome of his life.” Now, this sentence is clear, but not so funny anymore.

3. I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting; nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality, counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalizes intercommunications’ incomprehensibleness.

This phrase is amazing in many ways. First of all, it is built up with some of the longest words in the English language, which makes it hard to understand. This is one of the most sophisticated, long and confusing sentences of our list. This principle is called a “rhopalic sentence,” so you now have something new to tell your family and friends. The sentence above was invented by recreational linguist and author Dmitri Borgmann just for fun. If you have no desire to struggle through the meaning of this lengthy and wordy sentence, here is a less sophisticated version. If we put it simply, it could read “I don’t know where family doctors learned to write so that no one could read it. Still, the intellect of doctors and their ability to write badly are in balance, which is beyond my understanding.” To get an answer to this tangled question in another language, visit medical translation service which provides accurate documents. By the way: the second magic trick of this sentence is that each word is one letter longer than the previous one.

2. Are you up for chopping a tree down, or are you down to chop it up?

Wait, how is it possible to chop a tree down and then do the reverse? Here, phrasal verbs are to blame. “To chop down” and “to chop up” are similar so one may think that they are complete opposites. Right, the first of these confusing phrases means to hack the tree until it falls, but the second means cutting it to smaller pieces. Also, there’s a trick in being “up” or “down” to something, which may seem complete opposites, but in fact, meant the same. So, the phrase means: “Do you want to cut a tree, or do you fancy chopping it to pieces?” This sentence is possible because phrasal verbs can be different but mean the same thing, or be very similar but mean the opposite.

Read also: Get the bestSwedish translation from language experts in any industry.

1. Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

This sentence shows how weird English grammar rules can be at times. Unlike you may think, this is not a plain sequence full of meaningless repetitive words. It has sense and it’s correct grammatically! Let’s look into it right now.

“Buffalo” as a noun can mean an animal and a city in New York, but as a verb, it means “to intimidate or bully.” So, the meaning of the phrase goes like that: “A bison from Buffalo NY that the bison from Buffalo NY bully, are bullying bison from Buffalo NY.” As you can see, the sentence means to say that two bison from NY bamboozle each other, but in a more sophisticated way. This is a “crown gem” of weirdness that the English grammar can produce, and for a foreigner, it would mean complete nonsense unless somebody explained it to them.

Useful information: Find the best English to Polish translation service with native translators.

Which Confusing Sentences Did You Like the Most?

Sure, there are many more examples of weird English sentences which may appear everywhere. They pop up in friendly conversations, on TV, and appear on social media. Sometimes, they are welcomed because they let us laugh out loud. However, best translation services try to avoid ambiguity as much as possible, because confusing English sentences may ruin translation. Share these top 10 weird English phrases with a friend or a family member and see if they can detangle all of them.