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Headlines and Verbs



I love a good headline.  And I don't mean by this the usual examples, "Headless Body in Topless Bar" and so forth.

I mean headlines where there is a central word that doubles as both verb and adjective, especially when the meaning shifts.

I vaguely recall an example that said something like this: "FBI Links Bomb Plot, Sleeper Cell." The writer of the headline presumably meant that the FBI had discovered facts that connected a bomb plot to a particular "sleeper cell." If you presume that "links" is a verb, that flows nicely.

But what if it is an adjective, telling us something about the bomb plot?

If the headline writer reads his paper's sports section now and then, he knows that "links" is often employed as a synonym for the sport of golf, or more specifically for the lay-out of a course. Thus, perhaps the FBI has created a deep undercover sleeper cell that plans a strike against somebody's favorite "links" somewhere. Those bastards!

Now, though, I have a new favorite headline. the Wall Street Journal's Metro section recently carried this, "New Taxi Fuels Concern."

Departing NYC mayor Bloomberg has  pressed for a redesign of the old yellow cabs, so that the city does have a lot of these "new taxis" on its streets. further, "fuel" is often used in an extended sense by headline writers to mean "gives rise to". Thus, the new taxis give rise to concern, right?

But the concerns are about fuel economy. so the headline also works if "fuels" is the substantive noun and "taxi" is the adjective.  Thus, "concern" can be either object or verb.

In this instance, in contrast to the "links bomb plot" example, any way of reading the headline fairly represents the story. Even better.

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