If you’ve heard of Noam Chomsky*, the revolutionary modern linguist and philosopher, then you might have also heard of this absurd expression he came up with: “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” It was designed to be an example of a sentence that’s grammatically correct yet semantically nonsensical—in other words, despite being totally valid English, there’s no discernable meaning.
Think about how bizarre that sentence is for a second and how well it works to accomplish its intended goal. “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” Everything in it contradicts. The two adjectives in the sentence, colorless and green, are oxymoronic, and, in their literal sense, are not words that can describe an idea. The adverb and verb also form their own oxymoron (how would you sleep furiously?) and they describe an action that an idea cannot perform. In short, there are four layers of contradiction here—impressive for a five word sentence—yet it still works in English.
But for a lot of people, it feels like it shouldn’t work. It’s an example of a category mistake. The words in the sentence establish categories for the other words that they don’t end up satisfying.
Should category mistakes be considered grammar mistakes? Does the existence of nonsense sentences like this one mean we need to reform fringe aspects of English grammar? I don’t really know, and there are many more people far more qualified than I am working on that question. But here’s an interesting, fun challenge: can you find discernable meaning in that sentence?
Finding meaning in a sentence like “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” might seem totally pointless, but there has been documented interest in discerning a meaning from it. Discerning a meaning doesn’t really break the original purpose of the sentence, but it does pose a fun challenge.
You could find meaning by interpreting some of the words metaphorically, or with alternate definitions. For example, “colorless” can describe things that are boring or nondescript, and “green” may be reinterpreted as jealous or environmental. You could then read it as “Boring jealous ideas have violent nightmares.” which almost makes sense.
Another, more interesting way to do this is to try to provide meaning for the sentence through context. There was actually a competition held at Stanford to provide that context in 100 words or less. Most of the entries were highly metaphorical. The winner, a poem, for example:
Thus Adam’s Eden-plot in far-off time:
Colour-rampant flowers, trees a myriad green;
Helped by God-bless’d wind and temperate clime.
The path to primate knowledge unforeseen,
He sleeps in peace at eve with Eve.
One apple later, he looks curiously
At the gardens of dichromates, in whom
colourless green ideas sleep furiously
then rage for birth each morning, until doom
Brings rainbows they at last perceive.
-A. H. Byatt
This, mind you, is absolutely gorgeous prose. But personally, that’s still a little too abstract for me. So the other day, I tried to make a context for the sentence under the pretense of using as little metaphor as possible. Here is the result:
Stacy Kyle was a climate scientist with some very bold and ambitious ideas. Energy consumption and production must be made emissions-free, she explained, while proposing the idea of slowly converting the entire country’s supply to renewables. The idea was not well-received, in part due to its feasibility and political opposition, and partly because of its unmarketable and unoriginal image. It was quickly put to rest, until a string of famous social critics reignited interest in the matter, citing Kyle’s ideas and hailing her particular rhetorical method as genius. A plurality of the population took interest, and began to ardently support the growing movement. Now under immense, fiery pressure, the opposing faction conceded the point that sometimes even colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
I slightly exceeded 100 words, but I thought it worked well to accomplish the goal: It described an environmental (green) idea; “Unmarketable and unoriginal image” provided context for “colorless”, “put to rest” was the justification for “sleep”, and “immense, fiery” and “ardently” supported “furiously.” I basically intended the last part as “Sometimes even uninspired environmental initiatives do not go quietly into the night.” which I think is pretty literal.
It’s not perfect, though—not by a long shot. It still uses some abstraction, and the sentence didn’t stand on its own; it was part of bigger one. Can we do better?
If by “better,” you mean more literal, then yes. It’s more or less a function of however specific/contrived we allow the context to be.
With a little more leeway, let’s try this once again:
“Astounding,” said Dr. Glover, marvelling at the sight ahead. “What do you call it?”
“How about… the Prismatic Brainalyzer.”
His doctoral student, Orville Wheeler, was a prodigy in the cognitive neuroscience of dreams. And he had proven as much—he created the incredible invention now sitting in front of them.
“That’s very fitting,” agreed the doctor, “So, explain to me once again how it works.”
Orville was excited to show off his chops. “The… Prismatic Brainalyzer… analyzes the patterns of a sleeping patient’s brain. It first implants an idea into their head to develop. Then it assigns each of them a “color” value, which corresponds to the emotional weight and type of their dream, as well as the clout it occupies in their mental space.”
“Interesting.”
“Yes. It also gives an intensity reading, which you can see on this chart on the machine.” Orville pointed at the chart and then hesitated. “…We don’t have a technical term yet, but I like to label high intensity, from around 700-900 lumens, as ‘colorful.’”
“And the low intensity ones?”
“Colorless.”
Dr. Glover paused while thinking, and lightly paced the laboratory. “So what do different colors tell you about how implanted ideas are developing in the dreams?”
“See, that’s the thing. We can only make indirect observations about what they mean. It’s very clear that different colors correspond to different mental states, but finding out the exact meaning of each color and intensity takes time. We first have to find patients to implant ideas in, get them to sleep, and then question them about their dreams. And still, they don’t always remember…”
“I see. Well, what do we know so far?”
“Patients have described colorful yellow ideas as blissful”
“And?”
“Colorful red ideas tend to sleep fastidiously.”
“Anything else?”
“Not much. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”
“Astounding,” said the doctor, now more intrigued than ever, “Continue research with patients. I’ll work on getting us more funding. This could be huge.”
Orville smiled. “Yes, it could.”
A little outlandish, but it’s fun—par for the course with sci-fi.
Writing story contexts like these reminds me of those jokes where you read through a lengthy, detailed story, and then it ends up all being a setup for some awful one-liner (i.e. a “Shaggy Dog Story“). Except instead of a pop-culture reference or bad pun, we have our weird Chomsky sentence to end it. And I think writing stories for this has its own added challenge, since the sentence was designed to be nonsensical.
Seriously, imagine how impressive it would be to read one where had no clue what it was doing all the way up until seeing “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” Go make some crazy, contrived contexts yourself, and be sure to enjoy writing cool stories along the way, too.
As always: Have at it, and tell me how it goes.