this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] Etterra@discuss.online 14 points 20 hours ago (3 children)

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 4 points 16 hours ago

Gorilla gorilla, Gorilla gorilla gorilla, gorilla Gorilla gorilla

[–] silasmariner@programming.dev 4 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Ignoring capitalisation you can add as many buffalos as you like and still be parsable. I've only ever heard buffalo used as a verb in this one context, though, so seems a bit forced to me

[–] Iunnrais@lemm.ee 1 points 55 seconds ago

The scuttlebutt is that buffalo as a verb was only attested very briefly in upstate New York and the Midwest for a brief period of time in the early 1900s. It never spread nationally, and definitely not internationally.

However, checking Google ngrams shows that “he buffaloed” and “was buffaloed”, (to ensure it’s being used idiomatically as a verb and not just in the famous example sentence) emerged in 1900, peaked in the 1950s, but has sustained small but constant use in published print since then. I was actually expecting the ngram to rapidly drop off and never recover… shocked to see that some people still use it as a real phrase.