[Ads-l] redshirt (UNCLASSIFIED)

[David Barnhart]

Dear Bill (if I may),

This is a wonderful find.  Thanks for sharing it.  I did a little digging of
my own and found this early (?) quote:


Supt. Dan Neuenswander drops into coaches' lingo to describe Cordley
Elementary School's new first grade. 
It is, he explained, a process of red-shirting 6-year-olds.
Developmental first grade is for children who complete kindergarten but are
not developed sufficiently to handle first grade.  Katharine Weickert,
"Intermediate grade helps 6-year-olds," Lawrence Journal-World
(NewspaperArchive.com), Nov. 22, 1984, p 10

Regards,
David

barnhart at highlands.com


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From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Mullins, Bill CIV (US)
Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 2015 4:52 PM
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Subject: redshirt (UNCLASSIFIED)

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Subject:      redshirt (UNCLASSIFIED)
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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 tre=
atments to school enrollment, so their child will begin school at the oldes=
t 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 sch= ools on the East
Coast."

Melitta Cutright _Growing Up Confident_ NY:Doubleday, 1992. p 187 "Other
parents, believing that older students are always more successful, a= re
electing on their own to "redshirt" their children in hopes of giving th= em
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 h=
olding their kids back from kindergarten for a year.  They think "redshirti=
ng," named after a similar practice among college students, gives kids an e=
dge."



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 like=
ly 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, facel=
ess, and the first to die."


Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

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