What is "garden path sentence"

n. A sentence that is easily parsed incorrectly when first read, due to ambiguity of a word or words.

A garden path sentence, such as "The old man the boat," is a grammatically correct sentence that starts in such a way that a reader's most likely interpretation will be incorrect; the reader is lured into a parse that turns out to be a dead end or yields a clearly unintended meaning. "Garden path" refers to the saying "[[wikt:lead someone down the garden path|to be led down [or up] the garden path]]", meaning to be deceived, tricked, or seduced.

Such a sentence figuratively leads the reader toward a seemingly familiar meaning that is actually not the one intended. It is a special type of sentence that creates a momentary ambiguous interpretation because it contains a word or phrase that can be interpreted in multiple ways, causing the reader to begin to believe that a phrase will mean one thing when in reality it means something else. When read, the sentence seems ungrammatical, makes almost no sense, and often requires rereading so that its meaning may be fully understood after careful parsing.