garden-path

[ gahr-dn-path, -pahth ]

adjective

1. noting or pertaining to a sentence that is easily parsed incorrectly because its beginning suggests it has an interpretation that it clearly does not have.

Example Sentences

Among the hardest are what psycholinguists call garden-path sentences, like “The cotton clothes are made up of grows in Mississippi.”

From New York Times

“I wonder what you have been doing. Leading Frank Crawley up the garden-path?”

From Literature

At last he reached the little wicket gate leading from the highway to his cottage; but on his opening p. 106it, he was awe-struck on seeing coming from his house along the garden-path, a gentleman clad in deep mourning. 

From Project Gutenberg

There was a little garden in front of the house separated from the lake-shores by an unkempt hedge, and planted only with a few fuchsia bushes; the walls of the house were here and there discoloured, and once or twice as I passed up the garden-path I stepped upon a broken tile.

From Project Gutenberg

He heard footsteps on the garden-path.

From Project Gutenberg