I can't believe that is a grammatically acceptable sentence! But if Metro says it's true, who am I to say it isn't.. hmm.. it took me a little while to get my head around it, actually I had to look it up on Wikipedia! Apparently buffalo has 3 meanings: 1. buffalo the animal (bison), 2. Buffalo the place in New York, 3. to intimidate, confuse or deceive (I don't really see what's so confusing or deceptive about buffalos, so I'm not really sure how buffalo ended up meaning all that! -maybe someone found out how deceptive they are, and was confused about it..). It's quite funny, I've never heard that expression before, but it reminds me of an American lecturer I had at uni who used to refer to scary things as bears, like "this exam is a bear". I can't really think of any English examples apart from saying that something is mammoth if it's huge.. I'm sure there must be some!
Anyway.. I did find out what all those buffalo in a row meant.. in case you're interested, this is how it goes:
[Those] buffalo(es) from Buffalo [that are intimidated by] buffalo(es) from Buffalo intimidate buffalo(es) from Buffalo.
Bison from Buffalo, New York, who are intimidated by other bison in their community also happen to intimidate other bison in their community.
THE buffalo FROM Buffalo WHO ARE buffaloed BY buffalo FROM Buffalo ALSO buffalo THE buffalo FROM Buffalo.
OK, William J. Rapaport has single handedly made buffalo confusing! I do find it pretty funny he was an associate professor at the University of Buffalo, typical.
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