Why are they 'nude photos'?

Asked Jul 09 '19 at 17:19

Active Jul 13 '19 at 04:26

Viewed 1.3k times

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Recent news events in the US have resulted in many headlines about "nude photos of young women" and variations.

Obviously it's the women who are nude, not the photos, so why does this phrasing persist? Is it an idiom, or does it just flow better, or is it some other nuance of usage that I haven't seen in other situations?

Edit: I don't think the linked question is directly on point (though I do see the connection), nor do I think just saying "nude photos are photos of nudes, duh" is an informative answer or comment. Defining nude photos as photos of nudes ignores the fact that the headline refers to photos of women.

edited Jul 11 '19 at 02:00

asked Jul 09 '19 at 17:19

Jim Mack

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It’s no different than pictures of me playing baseball being called my baseball photos or calling the pictures of me swimming my swimming photos. – Jim Jul 09 '19 at 17:32
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A nude photo is nude in the same sense that a beer bottle is beer. – RegDwigнt Jul 09 '19 at 18:28
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For the same reason as there are cat videos – marcellothearcane Jul 09 '19 at 18:45
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See also: vacation photos, yearbook photos – TaliesinMerlin Jul 09 '19 at 21:20
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@RegDwigнt♦ A beer bottle is a beer bottle regardless of whether it contains beer or not. – Spencer Jul 09 '19 at 22:33
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None of these examples (except maybe "cat videos") have the peculiar Munchausen-syndrome-by-proxy nature of OP's phrase. On the other hand, there is something going on here beyond mere idiom. So far, @TaliesinMerlin seems to be closest. – Spencer Jul 09 '19 at 22:41
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@Spencer precisely my point. I choose my words very carefully. – RegDwigнt Jul 10 '19 at 09:27
@Spencer A beer bottle is a beer bottle when it contains beer, else it is only a bottle that looks like a beer bottle or a bottle with a label that says it is used for beer. No? – Organic Heart Jul 10 '19 at 10:04
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@Jalene No, it's a "beer bottle". – Spencer Jul 10 '19 at 11:42
But they are not “nude young photos of women” or “young nude photos of women” – Sebastiaan van den Broek Jul 10 '19 at 13:00
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@EdwinAshworth, yes, this is a case of a transferred epithet, but the question is still not quite a duplicate. What makes this case specially puzzling is that the noun from which the epithet is transferred, women, remains a part of the phrase; that is not the case in the examples discussed in the other question and the answer to it. One can understand why the epithet would be transferred when the noun to which it was originally attached is dropped, but it is puzzling why it would be transferred when the noun remains. – jsw29 Jul 10 '19 at 23:19
@Jim - Would you ever refer to baseball photos of women? If not then your example misses the point. – Jim Mack Jul 11 '19 at 02:02
cf. nude photos of old men – voices Jul 11 '19 at 08:10
@jsw29 I can't agree. There are over 125 000 Google hits for "nude photos of young men". If the question is about a perceived gender bias in the use of the word 'nude', it needs resubmitting. This is a duplicate. – Edwin Ashworth Jul 11 '19 at 11:00
@JimMack, preface or idioms itself describing the nature of photo.. it gives more focus/attention then photo of the nudes. When you say 'nude' brain is geeting immediate attention without following rest of the words.. – Bala Jul 11 '19 at 11:33
In German, a nude photo in the usual sense is "ein Nacktfoto" while a photo which is nude would be "ein nacktes Foto". English does not mark the grammatical roles of words strongly compared to related languages which have kept more inflections. – Carsten S Jul 11 '19 at 13:12
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I don’t understand the question. Could you provide several examples of this type of photo? – James McLeod Jul 11 '19 at 16:40
@Spencer I disagree. If the bottle is unlabeled, it is simply a bottle. It might be the shape one commonly associates as containing beer, but being unlabeled, it could be for water, or soda, or anything else able to be poured. It is only the labelling (or contents) that make it a 'beer bottle'. – CGCampbell Jul 11 '19 at 16:44
@JimMack, why would one not refer to baseball photos of women? Sounds like an entirely reasonable construction to me: if you take photos at a baseball game, and specifically choose to photograph female players, you've taken baseball photos of women. – Harry Johnston Jul 12 '19 at 01:57
@RegDwigнt If your point was that a beer bottle is a beer bottle even if it contains no beer, you're saying that a nude photo is a nude photo even if it contains no nudity? That doesn't make any sense. – Matthew Read Jul 12 '19 at 16:40
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The point RegDwight makes about the beer bottle is not cryptic. A beer bottle is not (made of) "beer" just as a nude photo is not "nude=naked". – Mari-Lou A Jul 13 '19 at 07:17
This question isn't a duplicate of the claimed question, simply because the word "nude" here is not a transferred epithet. With its definition as "depicting...naked people," it applies to the word, "photo" directly without transference. See this answer. That the adjective "nude" doesn't, at face value, seem to apply to the noun "photo" simply comes from ignorance of that definition. – MarkDBlackwell Jul 20 '19 at 17:39

9 Answers9

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Collocations modifying photo often don't refer to the photo as a physical object. They instead refer to the subject of the photo, or what's depicted in the image.

To demonstrate this, here are the most common collocations for ____ photo according to the Corpus of Contemporary American English. I have bolded the ones that describe the image (source, subject, or whatever) and italicized the ones that describe a property of the physical photograph. Other results are left unchanged. Numbers describe frequency within the corpus.

these (434)
family (379)
two (316)
take (243)
color (234)
AP (225)
those (222)
taking (180)
digital (168)
old (160)
scene (147)
three (135)
nude (129)
framed (124)
satellite (122)
black-and-white (113)
took (112)
aerial (91)
four (87)
five (84)
snapping (82)
wedding (63)

Out of these results, a family photo is understood to be a photo of a family, just as a wedding photo is understood to be a photo of a wedding. Similarly, English has other constructions, like nude photo. The same positioning can also describe provenance (AP photo, satellite photo, aerial photo), quality of photo (black-and-white photo, color photo), physical status (framed photo, digital photo), and so on.

Hearers understand nude photo to refer to what's in the photo because of established usage. Also, the idea of a photo in the "nude" does not make much sense, so the physical interpretation of the object is unlikely. Many media objects have this quality; a ___ book can refer to either the physical object (big book, hardcover book) or to a quality of the text inside (a sad book, a scholarly book). A bit of logic and some arbitrary usage rules determine how people interpret collocations involving media objects.

answered Jul 09 '19 at 21:33

TaliesinMerlin

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One can easily see how a photo of a family becomes a family photo. One can also see why that happens: the latter formulation is simpler and easier to integrate into longer sentences. That, however, is not analogous to the present case. If photos of nude women followed the same pattern, it would turn into nude-women photos, but that's not what actually happens. The puzzling question is why does the adjective nude move to photos, while the of women construction remains. Photos of tall women would never become tall photos of women. – jsw29 Jul 09 '19 at 23:42
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I don't see the equivalent formation necessarily being photo(s) of nude women. It could easily be photo of a nude. Compare to Dali's Study of a Nude. Nude would thus be an attributive noun in nude photo, just like family in family photo or wedding in wedding photo. – TaliesinMerlin Jul 10 '19 at 01:29
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@jsw29 Nude is a noun - meaning "naked model/person" (this usage has been common for around two centuries, so it's not exactly new). So it's exactly analogous to "family photo". The only confusing part is that nude is also used as an adjective (as the latin original nudus it came from). – Luaan Jul 10 '19 at 06:34
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@Luaan On that analysis I don't see how we would be able to say nude photos of his ex, so I think jsw29 is right. – Jul 10 '19 at 07:17
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@Minty "Nude photo" is a photo of a nude. "Nude photo of his ex" is a photo of a nude, who happens to be his ex (or was made by his ex, clunky as it is). Does "Leg photo of his ex" sound weird to you? For bonus points, nude (noun) also already means "a depiction of a nude person". If you follow the progression from "a depiction of a nude person" to another (very natural) adjectivisation, you get "nudity-depicting photo", so in this interpretation nude in "nude photos" would be an adjective, but wouldn't really mean bare. These kinds of changes happen very fast in human communication. – Luaan Jul 10 '19 at 08:02
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@Minty In the end, the most important part is - it's not confusing anyone. Nobody mistakenly believes that the photos are bare of their covering, for example (unless it's clear from context). These kinds of shortenings are extremely common. "Cycling photos of his ex" also isn't anything weird, is it? It clearly means "Cycling-depicting photos", and nobody would think the photos cycle. You're right that the "X" in "X photos" behaves more usually as an adjective, but "X" itself can be pretty much anything. – Luaan Jul 10 '19 at 08:09
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@Luaan in the context of a question asking how is it that nude photos means what it does, I don't agree that that's the most important part - in fact I don't think it's important at all. I'm not clear whether you are arguing that in nude photo of his ex, nude is still a noun. I can't see how it can be - I haven't closed my mind on that, but saying what it means doesn't help. The point is that if it is not a noun in that sentence, it is harder to argue that it is a noun in nude photos. – Jul 10 '19 at 08:38
@Minty So, what is cycling in Cycling photos of his ex? Mind you, I'm not necessarily saying that nude in nude photo must be a noun. But if you do treat it as an adjective, it's a different adjective, with a different (though related) meaning - some sort of contraction of nude depicting or such. My main point is that regardless of the interpretation, nude photos is not some weird exception - it's a very common thing that happens in language. – Luaan Jul 10 '19 at 09:29
@Luaan I don't really disagree with that, but can't square it with your original comment, where you were responding to jsw29's comment that nude is an adjective by saying that it's a noun. – Jul 10 '19 at 14:30
If nude photos of his ex means photos of a nude, namely his ex and cycling photos of his ex follows the same pattern, that means cycling photos of his ex means photos of a cycling, namely his ex, which can't be right. I think the first one means photos of his ex, nude - but I'm not sure the second one means photos of his ex, cycling... – Jul 10 '19 at 14:31
... I would definitely include photos taken in the pub after a day's cycling as cycling photos, even though they don't show anybody cycling. I think the phrase means something more like photos of his ex related to cycling, whereas the nude version can't mean photos of his ex related to nude, so I think this is a false parallel. – Jul 10 '19 at 14:31
Just to drop a bit of input in this discussion (I've been reading and thinking, so thank you both) I'm noncommital about whether nude in nude photos is an attributive noun or an adjective. At least for nude, I see both possibilities. Defining potential rephrasings (like "photo of a nude" or "photo of someone nude" or "photo of someone who is nude") helps tease out how particular collocations may be understood. My original comment was intended to caution against overdetermining how nude has to function. – TaliesinMerlin Jul 10 '19 at 15:34
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The important information I will remember from this answer is that the ratio of nude photos per wedding photos is about 2:1. – Evargalo Jul 10 '19 at 16:52
+1 for the sad book comparison. I will be sure to try and cheer up all my sad books when I get home. – nekomatic Jul 11 '19 at 09:48
@jsw29: "Tall photos" could refer to the physical size or aspect ratio of the photo, so there's ambiguity there. – Dan Jul 11 '19 at 13:24

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nude ADJECTIVE
...
1.1 [attributive] Depicting or performed by naked people.
‘she won't do any nude scenes’
Lexico

edited Jul 09 '19 at 21:11

answered Jul 09 '19 at 17:35

GEdgar

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This is just a dictionary definition without any explanation whatsoever. Might just as well post a link in a comment. BTW it's no longer Oxford Dictionaries, it's now called Lexico. – Mari-Lou A Jul 09 '19 at 20:16
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@Mari-LouA That makes this answer one of those notorious *nomina nuda* which people are always railing about. Hard to blame them, really. – tchrist Jul 09 '19 at 20:55
@Mari-LouA ... you are right. Lexico. – GEdgar Jul 09 '19 at 21:12
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While it's just a definition it does address the question. – Loren Pechtel Jul 10 '19 at 04:03
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While in the form of a quote, this answer identifies which definition is relevant and even provides an example. – ikegami Jul 10 '19 at 08:11
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This answer doesn't address the question at all. Simply stating that the word nude is an adjective doesn't say anything about how adjectives work in English, and providing an example is useless when the op himself already did so. – Eduardo Wada Jul 10 '19 at 16:12
OP wasn't asking for the definition of "nude", he was asking why photos of nude people were being referred to as "nude photos", when such a phrase could also be interpreted as the photos being nude rather than the subject of the photos being nude. – Aubreal Jul 10 '19 at 18:23
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How does it not address the question? It states clearly that the word "nude" can mean depicting or performed by naked people. Ie; the "nude photo" is a photo depicting nude photos. To say this answer is invalid would seem to also argue the question wasn't valid either, since the answer was as easy as looking up the word nude. – alex.pilon Jul 10 '19 at 19:54
@alex.pilon if you read the question, it's not about the definition of nude, it's about the placement that applies it to photo. This answer is completely ignoring the actual question to focus on an irrelevant detail. – RonLugge Jul 10 '19 at 20:03
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I agree with @alex.pilon. The definition does read. "Depicting ... naked people". How could that apply to anything other than the photo? – Michael J. Jul 10 '19 at 20:44
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The OP already knows that the word can be so used; he is seeking an explanation of that use. – jsw29 Jul 10 '19 at 23:27
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@jsw29 The question was: 'I thought nude can only apply to people'. The answer is: 'Well, there's another meaning of nude that does not'. I can't really see what else needs explaining – crizzis Jul 11 '19 at 08:21
@jsw29 And does the dictionary definition merely LMGTFY'd here go beyond licensing this particular (nude pictures = pictures of nudes) usage? Does it address the fact that some see 'nude pictures' as implying 'pictures of female nudes'? – Edwin Ashworth Jul 11 '19 at 11:05
@RonLugge The definition clarifies the use of the placement. The placement indicates that (sorry not sure the correct term) "subject", ie; the photo, is depicting naked people. I'm unsure what irrelevant detail is being focused on. – alex.pilon Jul 15 '19 at 14:17

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It’s a way to refer to photos with nude subjects. As you can see from Ngram this expression took off from the ‘60s/70s when pictures portraying nude people, generally women, started to become popular; the same expression was used earlier referring to paintings

Nude:

(of a photograph, painting, statue, etc.) being or prominently displaying a representation of the nude human figure.

(Dictionary.com)

edited Jul 10 '19 at 06:52

answered Jul 09 '19 at 17:39

user 66974

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Thanks for the Ngram. It reinforces the idea that the phrase has become an idiom. – Jim Mack Jul 09 '19 at 19:23
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@JimMack Enough of all this beating around the bush already. It's time to let the cat out of the bag and spill the beans: in exactly what fashion could "nude photos" *EVER* be considered any sort of "idiom"?? You're clearly barking up the wrong tree here. The elephant in the room is that timeless refrain, "A noun simply qualified doth never an idiom make." Since it takes two to tango, the ball's in your court now, Roger Federer. – tchrist Jul 09 '19 at 21:11
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@tchrist -would “black photo” mean a photo of black people? There is something idiomatic in “nude photo”, though it is not an idiom. – user 66974 Jul 10 '19 at 09:57
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There is utterly no connection to "idiom" here, @JimMack . it's exactly the same as saying an "action movie" or a "family holiday" or a "color photo" or a "pop song". It's an "adjective". – Fattie Jul 10 '19 at 10:20
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@tchrist - the 'idiomatic' part, it seems to me, comes from the notion that nude photos means photos of nudes. But the headline phrase is already photos of women. So the nude seems to have migrated from modifying women to modifying photos. I don't mean to say that nude photos is itself an idiom, only that this usage seems idiomatic. – Jim Mack Jul 10 '19 at 12:17

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It happens fairly often in English that an adjective is "transferred" from one subject to another, even when it doesn't strictly speaking apply to the latter, provided it is still relevant (in some sense) to the latter. This often begins as a mild figure of speech — see https://www.thoughtco.com/transferred-epithet-1692558 for various examples — but in a great many cases this develops into an independent sense. This happens particularly often when one subject denotes a person and one subject denotes a thing, perhaps because this rarely creates any confusion. Examples include vegetarian (vegetarian people eat vegetarian food), healthy (exercise is healthy because it's likely to make people healthier), happy (a happy ending is one intended to make the audience happy), and unfortunate (you are unfortunate if an unfortunate event befalls you).

answered Jul 11 '19 at 00:11

ruakh

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Nude photos is a noun phrase that has become idiomatic and manifests in slang such as "nudies" or simply "nudes". The phrase "nude photos of X" does indeed seem like a retro-construction. This phrasing is also more euphemistic or neutral, perhaps, since as you mentioned, technically, it would be "X" who is nude, but "X" is not the grammatical subject (it is instead within the prepositional "of X").

@user240918 and @GEdgar also make good points.

Note Webster:

nude (adj) bare, naked, nude, bald, barren mean deprived of naturally or conventionally appropriate covering. ... nude applies especially to the unclothed human figure.

answered Jul 09 '19 at 18:38

Carly

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I think the answer is that it's now idiomatic, as you point out. Many of the other answers and comments seem to just state the obvious. – Jim Mack Jul 09 '19 at 19:21
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@JimMack This is wrong. It is not in any way idiomatic. It means what it literally says. Therefore it is not idiomatic. A cat photo is a photo of a cat. A clock hand is the hand of a clock; it is not a hand that is clocky. Cock crow is not a crow that is cocky. Child photos aren't photos that will someday grow up. Rather, they are photos *OF* children. – tchrist Jul 09 '19 at 21:18
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It is not idiomatic in the "a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words (e.g., rain cats and dogs, see the light)", but it is idiomatic in the second sense "a form of expression natural to a language, person, or group of people." Both are from OED – Carly Jul 09 '19 at 21:54
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@tchrist I asked the question 'Is a dead metaphor still a metaphor?' way back. It could well be argued that the primary sense of nude being naked, 'nude photographs', using 'nude' in other than its archetypal sense but in a universally accepted way, is an example of an idiom. – Edwin Ashworth Jul 11 '19 at 11:09

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It's often the case when describing containers that we use adjectives that describe their contents rather than their own intrinsic properties. (containers isn't a technical term but it fit the concept).

For example

a physics textbook isn't physics, rather the contents describe knowledge we have on the field of physics
your family photos aren't related to you, rather they're photos in which the subject is your family.
a beer bottle isn't made of beer, rather it contains beer.

I would not consider the phrase "nude photo" idiomatic, it's just the standard way of saying that the photo's subject is nude.

answered Jul 10 '19 at 18:43

Aubreal

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None of your examples involve adjectives; I think you're looking for the word "modifier". – ruakh Jul 13 '19 at 03:48

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From the OED, bold emphasis mine:

nude

A3c. (adj) Of a work of art, form of entertainment, etc.: involving or portraying one or more naked or scantily clad people; performed without clothing. Also of an actor or model: that performs or poses unclothed.

1869 D. N. Camp Amer. Year-bk. I. 791 Her charms, so freely exhibited on the stage at this time that to her example the successful origin of the nude drama is attributed, were also used as the means of unnumbered conquests.

1874 Atlantic Monthly Nov. 532 We, of the legitimate, who regard the nude drama as a highly demoralizing innovation..went our several ways.

1888 Dict. National Biogr. at Daniel, George Several extant oil-paintings..are not improbably the work of George himself, as is also the full-length nude study of a nymph.

1959 Listener 15 Jan. 132/3 The night-clubs in Calvin's city put on nude shows.

1974 Publishers Weekly 26 Aug. 250/3 A novel about a nude model who longs for true love.

1982 A. Maupin Further Tales of City 81 Some of the boys did an impressive nude water ballet to the music of ‘Tea for Two’.

2000 Country Music People May 30/3 He shouldn't have taken those nude photos, but no matter.

B2a. (n) Art. With the: the naked or undraped human figure conceived of as an aesthetic object; the representation of this in art.

after French †nud painting of a naked human figure (1676). Compare Anglo-Norman and Middle French nu, nud (early 12th cent.; French nu), Italian nudo (a1294; a1472 in sense ‘painting of a naked human figure’)

1760 D. Webb Inq. Beauties Painting iv. 51 The result of this habit is evident, when our first artists come to design the nud.

1782 R. Cumberland Anecd. Painters Spain I. 56 Being most in the nude, their crime will in some people's judgment appear their recommendation.

1854 T. Martin Correggio iii. 65 I love the nude; Garments are nothing but the veils to beauty.

1868 R. Browning Ring & Bk. I. i. 4 Modern chalk drawings, studies from the nude.

1887 F. M. Crawford Saracinesca i The French school had not [yet] demonstrated the startling distinction between the nude and the naked.

1915 W. Cather Song of Lark i. xvi. 111 Ray found that his brakemen were likely to have what he termed ‘a taste for the nude in art’.

1974 M. Ayrton Midas Consequence viii. 208 Most of what I do is founded on, or derived from, the nude, the stripped human body, as is most of the good bronze sculpture in this world.

1992 Crafts Mar. 19/2 The nude is confronted in life class (and notice it is not called drawing class).

answered Jul 10 '19 at 11:42

OrangeDog

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Is the fact that the OED gives a full entry to this usage of “nude” an indication of idiomatic expression? – user 66974 Jul 10 '19 at 12:05
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@user240918 no, it gives a full entry to every single distinct usage and meaning. There are 15 for "nude". There are no listings for "nude" in the Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms. – OrangeDog Jul 10 '19 at 12:16
Do they give the same entry and usage examples for “family photo” or “holiday photo” for instance? – user 66974 Jul 10 '19 at 12:18
I am not saying it is an idiom, but that it is an idiomatic usage. – user 66974 Jul 10 '19 at 12:19
@user240918 for "family" there are additionally 50 compounds given, of which "family album" is the closest - (a) a book in which contributions, such as verses and signatures, are inscribed by and for members of a particular family (cf. album n.2 1a) (now rare); (b) a family's photograph album (cf. album n.2 1c). These are noted as being special cases of Of, relating to, or belonging to a (particular) family or household. – OrangeDog Jul 10 '19 at 12:22
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@user240918 it is neither idion, nor idiomatic usage, whatever you think the difference is between them. – OrangeDog Jul 10 '19 at 12:23
The difference between the two is clearly stated by the OED. – user 66974 Jul 10 '19 at 12:31
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@user240918 a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from the meanings of the individual words vs Relating to or exhibiting the forms of expression, grammatical constructions, phrases, etc. used in a distinctive way in a particular language, dialect, or language variety, formerly especially those considered nonstandard or colloquial. Now usually spec.: established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from the meanings of the individual words. – OrangeDog Jul 10 '19 at 12:37
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It is not idiomatic in the "a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words (e.g., rain cats and dogs, see the light)", *but it is idiomatic in the second sense "a form of expression natural to a language, person, or group of people." Both are from OED* – Carly 14 hours ago – user 66974 Jul 10 '19 at 12:49
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@user240918 If you are using that definition then everything in standard English is idiomatic. Everyone here will assume the usual definition instead. – OrangeDog Jul 10 '19 at 13:06

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Testing this out against my native speaker's understanding, I think there is a general pattern here. It may be relatively new, but I can't remember any time when I would not have understood it or might have been told off by an older person for abusing the language.

The pattern is that " photo", often means "photo depicting a " (or s plural). Tree photos. Hummingbird photos. Lorry photos. Cloud photos. Chair photos. None confuse me or sound wrong. Old computer photos (which parses as photos of old computers more than old photos of computers in my mind).

It's not unambiguous. "Newspaper photos" are likely to be snippets out of newspapers, not photos of newspapers. "Estate agent photos" are likely to be of houses for sale, not the people selling them.

BTW Is this a particular issue for people whose first language is a Latin one? I ask because this reminded me of a bleakly comic scene in "A Canticle for Liebowicz" wherein a few hundred years after a nuclear war destroyed the world, a monk whose first language is Latin who believes that "fallouts" were demons the destroyed his ancient world, is trying to make sense of a sign stating "Fallout survival shelter capacity 12".

Edit: I think Alexandre Aubrey's answer nails it. It's all to do with the directly modified object being a container.

edited Jul 11 '19 at 10:52

answered Jul 10 '19 at 09:01

nigel222

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In spanish, the appropriate use of prepositions will change the meaning: A "nude photo", literally translated "foto desnuda", has not the same meaning (it would be roughly "a naked photo", made with no tricks). Instead we say "foto de desnudo(s)". Note that we changed the gender of nude to "neutral" as is not referring itself to the photograpy -in Spanish a feminine noun- and we added the preposition "de", that in this case is telling us the theme of the photo (lit: "photo of nude"). – Stormbolter Jul 10 '19 at 09:27
As a side note, I think the wordplay of the novel comes less with differences between the latin languages grammar and more with not knowing what Fallout is: without that knowledge, a Fallout survival shelter can mean either "a shelter where you survive the (radioactive) fallout)" or "a shelter where you survive the fallout (race))". It helps that a Fallout can be interpreted as "some(thing/one) that fell out (from the sky)", aka a Fallen Angel. Given the religious background of some of the characters (I only looked at the synopsis, so may be wrong), this can be a possible interpretation. – Stormbolter Jul 10 '19 at 09:33
@Stormbolter his concern is that the shelter may contain fallouts, and whether they could have survived for centuries, and why would any person have wanted to help them to do so, and he is grappling with the adjectival use of nouns that this question was about ... but I'd never spotted the possible connection between "fallout" and fallen angel that might explain how the misinterpretation could arise. I'll have to read it again now. It's a great book. – nigel222 Jul 11 '19 at 11:01

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Recent news events in the US have resulted in many headlines about "nude photos of young women" and variations.

[W]hy does this phrasing persist?

Quoting (adding emphasis) from Joseph Henrich's 2016 book, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter: from p. 231:

[L]anguages arise from long-term cumulative cultural evolution. Like other aspects of culture ... our ... spoken languages ... have evolved via cultural transmission over generations to improve the efficiency and quality of communication, and to adapt to the details of local communication contexts, including ... social norms (like taboos).

From p. 232:

[A]mong our ancestors, cultural evolution accumulated, integrated, and honed many useful communicative elements over long stretches of time into increasingly complex repertoires[.]

Presumably this phrasing persists (within our local communication context) because, in our attempts to communicate this general idea, each of the exact communicative elements "nude photos" and "young women" contains enough pressure (perhaps arising from social norms) to survive (rather than dropping to the cutting room floor): perhaps this is because both elements are salacious, or refer to some current political themes, or otherwise have impact, which is presumably desired by the news headline editors. By this phrasing, the editors communicate to us a doublet of ideas: that the women are young, and that, normally, they are not nude. Presumably they are nice, acceptable people. This meaning is less conveyed by the phrasing, "photos of nude, young women."

So, the fact that both communicative elements persist (or that this phrasing persists) follows no grammatical rule: i.e., it is idiosyncratic (rather than idiomatic, precisely speaking).

Also, the very fact that our language productions typically follow various grammatical patterns is itself merely the result of our idiosyncratically weighing those grammatical patterns along with many other cultural factors, in our attempt to achieve success.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 07:40

Community

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answered Jul 12 '19 at 16:57

MarkDBlackwell

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Are you saying that this wording is needed to convey the idea that the women are normally not nude? Does anybody really think that 'photos of nude, young women' implies otherwise? – jsw29 Jul 13 '19 at 00:42
@jsw29 Arguably, "nude photos of young women" labels and objectifies them the least, "photos of young, nude women" does so the most, and "photos of nude, young women" falls in the middle—wouldn't you say? – MarkDBlackwell Jul 13 '19 at 04:39