This flexible language

Years ago, when I taught English as a Foreign Language, the daily paper was a go-to text. (My foreign students already knew how to find the train station and order a bowl of soup; they had to learn how to write essays and reports.)

The daily paper was not high lit, but it did display English as commonly used. And one of the best exercises was to ask them to make sense of news headlines, where verbs and nouns and adjectives were occasionally indistinguishable.

All that came to mind when I noticed a BBC headline. I think this one might baffle a lot of native speakers.

bbc.com/news/uk-england-lancashire-30387077 if you want the full story.

I doubt the full story would be better than what I imagined in my head.