[Ads-l] redshirt (UNCLASSIFIED)

Mullins, Bill CIV (US) william.d.mullins18.civ at MAIL.MIL
Wed Jun 3 20:52:01 UTC 2015


Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

This sense isn't in the OED.


_NY Post_ 24 May 2015
"Martin was further panicked to learn her child had been born in the wrong month; many women on the Upper East Side time their pregnancies and IVF treatments to school enrollment, so their child will begin school at the oldest age possible - a practice known as redshirting."

http://nypost.com/2015/05/24/inside-the-bizarre-life-of-an-upper-east-side-housewife/


_Ukiah [CA] Daily Journal_ 2 Jan 1991 p 5 col 4
"Redshirting, or holding children back from entering school to be sure they'll be academically strong later, is a practice that started in private schools on the East Coast."

Melitta Cutright _Growing Up Confident_ NY:Doubleday, 1992. p 187
"Other parents, believing that older students are always more successful, are electing on their own to "redshirt" their children in hopes of giving them an advantage over other children."


_USA Weekend_ 5 Sep 1993 p 16 col 2
"With a growing emphasis on school performance, more and more parents are holding their kids back from kindergarten for a year.  They think "redshirting," named after a similar practice among college students, gives kids an edge."



I also note that neither the OED nor the OED SF project doesn't include the _Star Trek_ sense of redshirt:  A person of minor importance who will likely get killed.  (But it is in _Brave New Worlds_)
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RedShirt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirt_(character)


Dirk Hayhurst _Out of My League: A Rookie's Survival in the Big Leagues_ NY: Citadel Press, 2012 p 119
"Now I felt a lot like one of the red shirts in Star Trek:  nameless, faceless, and the first to die."


Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list