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I was having a whole lot of trouble following this... in my brain, "red shirt" is a shirt that is red, and "redshirt" is one of the ritual sacrifices. "Why would Kirk need so many red shirts? He wears gold anyway."
Yes, it is almost my bedtime. I'll see myself out.
My bad! I’m new to the fandom and didn’t realize that the proper notation was as one word. I’ve edited the image to be correct.
It's not really a fandom thing and more of an English grammar thing.
- "Red shirt" is a noun phrase. It means "shirt is red".
- "Redshirt" (or red-shirt) is a compound noun. This is a new word with its own meaning, in this instance – expendable starship crew members.
It's the same difference as with:
- Black board (a board that is "not ok") vs. blackboard (a board used for tic-tac-toe championships)
- Hot dog (a man's best friend in need of AC) and hotdog (a phallic mystery meat consumable)
etc.
It isn't absolute. English is always evolving. What starts as two words may merge over time into a compound, or may not, or may exist in some grey area where either is acceptable. In the case of redshirt vs. red shirt, I think of the former as an individual concept, and the latter as a red individual concept. More specifically, the concept of a guy from Star Trek who gets regularly killed vs. a shirt that is red. But until a compound noun is widely understood and accepted, unless you're getting graded on your writing, either would usually be acceptable. As a native speaker, I couldn't even tell you if "hot dog" or "hotdog" is the more accepted spelling.
There are no absolutes in language, there are only reasonable deductions and guidelines. If enough people say something "wrong" enough times, it becomes "right". Which is is why there's a bunch of exceptions in languages. Best we can do is stick to making speech as unambiguous and as easy to understand as possible.
...I also didn't realize this was user-generated and thought it was just one of those satire accounts.
Keep on keepin on, good citizen. This old man is sleep deprived.
And I didn't realize you could edit images on Lemmy. Neat!