Meat balled pasta?
Red hair – > Red haired girl
Redneck -> Rednecked woman (yeah, gretchen wilson!)
White tail -> White tailed deer
Why don’t we just say “red hair girl”?
Therefore:
Dyed shirt -> “dyed shirt man” or “dyed shirted man”?
Painted face -> “Painted face boy” or “Painted faced boy”?
Obviously it is “dyed-shirt man” and “painted-face boy”. Why the grammatical hypocrisy?
It should have been (using mathematical factoring mechanism):
[dyed shirt]ed boy and [painted face]d boy.
Simply because, the English language has no means to convert a compound noun formed by a participle into another participle? That’s cheating – otherwise, we should accept “red hair girl”.
Is it “chickened rice” or “chicken rice”. I know – some people insist it should be “chicken & rice”. That’s another hypocrisy because we say “pepperoni pizza” rather than “pepperoni & pizza” or “meat ball pasta” rather “meat balls & pasta”.
Favorite Answer
“A participle is a non-finite verb form that can be used in compound tenses or voices, or it can be used as a modifier. Participles often share properties with other parts of speech, in particular adjectives and nouns.” (Wikipedia)
Study adjective usage some more and you’ll be disabused of your notions of “grammatical hypocrisy.”
