Garden-path definition
Of or relating to a sentence that is easily misparsed, as The horse raced past the barn fell, in which people usually misinterpret raced as a simple past tense verb, leading to a nonsensical interpretation, instead of as a passive participle, yielding the correct interpretation The horse, which was raced past the barn, fell.
adjective
Short for garden path sentence.
noun
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Other Word Forms
Noun
Singular:
garden-path
Plural:
garden-pathsOrigin of garden-path
- From the idiom "to be led down a garden path".
From Wiktionary