Research
 

An apparently well-formed English phrase with no meaning.

"The first number not nameable in under ten words" at first appears to refer to 1,101,121 (one million, one hundred one thousand, one hundred twenty one), but on closer examination is not name of any number, because if it were, that number would be nameable in nine words.  This is a version of Berry's Paradox, further described in IBM Report RC7483 (1979) On random and Hard-to-describe numbers .

English phrases with infinitely many meanings.

circular phrase toll house cookie delivery truck toll English is noteworthy for its ability to create arbitrarily long chains of nouns, each modifying the next.  When a noun chain bites its tail, the result is a loop that can have infinitely many slightly different meanings, depending on where one starts and stops and how many times one goes around the loop.  For example, if a "toll house cookie" is a type of cookie served at toll houses,  a "toll house cookie delivery truck toll house cookie" is a more specialized type of cookie served at  toll houses where tolls are collected from trucks delivering ordinary toll house cookies.
 
 

 
 
If two noun loops are joined in a figure eight, sharing a common word, one can choose independently at each passage through the diagram which loop to follow.  The result is an uncountable infinity of distinct paths, each with a slightly different meaning. Figure-8 phrase toll house cookie delivery truck speed limit enforcemnt truck

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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