‘Hospitals named after sandwiches kill five,’ ran a headline in the Times in June. When it was tweeted by the journalist Adam Macqueen, people pointed out that there really is a Mayo Clinic (in Minnesota), though egg or tuna is not specified, and there had been a BLT group of hospitals (Barts and the London Trust).
Such artlessly ambiguous headlines have, since 2009, been called crash blossoms, at the suggestion of an editor called Dan Bloom, suitably enough. The name derives from a headline in Japan Today: ‘Violinist Linked to JAL Crash Blossoms’. The article below it concerned the success of Diana Yukawa, whose father had died in a Japan Airlines crash.
Ambiguity thrives because English often uses the same words either as nouns or verbs, and in a headline it may be hard to tell which.
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