See if you can make a somewhat sensible sentence out of the following phrase: will/would have had been having to have been being had.
Here is my attempt: We are supposed to be having the town’s month long festivities celebrating the sunny season; but this year we have not yet seen the sun, only dark clouds and rain. If the clouds do not clear tomorrow, the festivities will have had been having to have been being had for 10 days!
Ha, ha, I am not even sure that the grammar is correct; but just thinking the verb phrase up and saying it out aloud made me laugh.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow, that’s a mouthful. I might have to mull this one over for several days before I know what it means!
Makes my head spin! I can’t figure it out either.
Clever
That’s funny. If you say it aloud like you really mean it, it seems to make more sense…or at least sound like it makes sense. 🙂
Here is my interpretation: If the rain does not stop by tomorrow, the people of the town will have been missing out on 10 days of continuous celebration. Here is how I break it down:
1. Will have had been … : By tomorrow the townspeople will look back at the previous celebration days and see them to be in a particular state of being, a state of being that is no longer existent ( hence the ‘had’ ). Now that I think about this, I think I should say, “If the clouds do clear tomorrow…” instead of “If the clouds do not clear tomorrow…”
2. Having to have been … This part begins to explain the state of being that the festivities will be in on the next day if the clouds clear. The festivities will be in a continuous (hence the ‘having’ ) state of ‘supposed to have already been occurring.’
3. Being had … I think this part just emphasizes the continuous nature of the celebration. I think it indicates the person’s desire to be in the midst of the festivities.
What were you thinking about about when you were thinking about this? It reminds me somewhat of trying to say something in Spanish at a time when I did not know enough subjunctive but I wanted to take a stab at it and ended up getting into a sentence I didn’t know how to get out of or finish!. Anyway, yesterday in church there was a responsive reading of 1John 3:1-2 where there is a phrase– what we will be has not yet been made known– and I understood that!
I was doing my research when the phrase ‘will have had to have been’ or something like that came into my mind ( I have no idea why ). Then I thought it would be amusing to make a sentence with a long verb phrase using ‘to have’ and ‘to be’ verbs. So I stopped my research and spent a half hour or so devising the longest phrase I could come up with that seemed grammatically correct.