This BoredPanda post made me chuckle.
I was just mentioning linguistic recursion in another thread, and this is closely related to the concept of unique sentences. Basically, every language has a finite set of words and rules but they yield an infinite number of valid sentences.
It was actually a little private joke between my ex and I. Sometimes, one of us would utter a weird, yet perfectly meaningful sentence. We would then pause and then go : “Pretty sure nobody has ever said this”. Unfortunately, I can’t remember any specific examples now…
I’ll pause and say “I’ll take Sentences I Never Thought I’d Say for 600, Alex.”
I’m sure no one before Chomsky ever said, “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” But now it has become a standard example of grammatically correct nonsense.
George Carlin riffed on this “back in the day”, words you never hear people say. (You just know he would have hated the phrase “back in the day”. I can hear him sneering about it)
“Hand me that piano” and “Please saw my legs off”.
As it happens, I heard someone say “I"m pissing sand” in the restroom at work yesterday.
I did not inquire further on the matter.
Overheard from a customer at work a few years ago: “And then my brother died and he took the damn ramen with him, the bastard!”
Oh, Goddammit! I wish I could remember the exact quote*, but it was from Ben Mankiewicz, yes, that Ben Mankiewicz!
“Incest Porn is just as good as Regular porn when the sound is off”
Did he really just say that??? Rewind. Yes, he did.
I’ll leave it up to you to YouTube it.
*I might be wildly off, but the topic is Dead On
Stephen Fry: “Hold the newsreader’s nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers.”