Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. This is a famous example of a sentence which looks like it is without meaning but is grammatical. It uses three different uses of the word buffalo.

Meaning 1: buffalo the animal, similar to a bison. It is used in the plural during the sentence.

Meaning 2: Buffalo the city in the State of New York. In our sentence it is used as an adjective.

Meaning 3: buffalo as a verb meaning to bully.

Here’s the situation: there are three herds of bison all of which come from Buffalo New York. The sentence becomes: New York bison (group 1) (who) New York bison (group 2) bully (in turn) bully New York bison (group 3). You can extend this chain to a sentence of any natural number of buffalo, with various capitalisation from one to infinity. For example the sentence “Buffalo!” is simply an order to bully someone or something. The sentence “Buffalo buffalo.” extends the order the bully a specific thing, in this case some bison. “Buffalo buffalo buffalo.” can mean various things, for instance bison bully bison.

Let's look at another classic. James, while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher. This is a beautiful abomination of the English language.

I’m going to paint a story to explain the sentence above. John and James are in an English class learning about whether to use had, or had had in a sentence. In a particular sentence John uses the single had, while John uses the double had had, which the teacher prefers. So repeating the original sentence with a lot more punctuation it becomes: James, while John had had (written) “had”, had had (written) “had had”, “had had” had had a better effect on the teacher.