"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."

[Arnox]

No, your local administrator has not gone insane. This is a sentence that is syntactically correct but semantically wrong. Or at least supposedly. But are we really sure that this sentence can never be semantically correct? I think it definitely can be but in a slightly roundabout way.

Let's take the first two words, 'colorless' and 'green.' How can you have a colorless green color? The combination makes no sense. But let's think about this a little further. What's a synonym for colorless? Invisible. And what could green symbolically represent? Well, green is often portrayed as the color of envy. So we have hidden envy. Alright, now let's clear the second and last mountain. Sleeping furiously? When we're sleeping, we're in a relaxed state. But what would it mean if someone said that an idea sleeps in someone's mind? It means that an idea is in that mind but lurking in the background; not really at the forefront at all, but still present. Okay, but how can an idea sleep furiously in the background? Well, it could mean that even though that idea isn't at the forefront, it's still causing a lot of pain and discomfort inside that person.

With all of that done, let's put everything we've surmised into a sentence that means the same thing but makes a lot more sense on the surface as well.

Spoiler

Hidden envious ideas lurk uncomfortably in people's minds.

Anyway. I just thought this was a fun logical and linguistic exercise.

 

[Drathnoxis]

No, your local administrator has not gone insane.

After reading the whole post I'm still not certain.

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

Imagination runs wild on the green screen.

 

[Gauche]

With light, Pink is the result/absence of the color green
Pinky is just sleeping pist that Pac-Man got em

 

[Myoxo]

"The door is over there."
That can be a polite and helpful direction to a somewhat lost and confused person. Or it can be a pretty icy instruction to get the fuck out of your home. I'll argue that in the former case, only the topmost layer, the words themselves, are relevant. In the other? You could probably write a novel around those five words. Similarly, what do you communicate when you post the idea that colorless green ideas are furiously asleep? All the words are, by themselves, contradictions. Could we construct a context where it makes sense? Well, you already have: This is a classic from Chomsky, and it's been debated up and down on various nachspielen full of pretentious academics for two generations. As such, you just put me 15 years back in time. I could smell that sentence due to all the associated memories. Again, you could probably write a novel around all the associated social interactions. In a way, that particular statement is a meme.