When I was young and knew everything, one thing of which I was especially certain was that there was good English and bad English, and most people didn’t know the difference but I did.
Among the many painful lessons I’ve learned since those far off days is that most of what I know for certain is not certain at all. Sometimes, I even act consistent with that knowledge, but as the endlessly patient Mrs Grace will inform you, such instances of humility are not only rare but almost never take place when most needed.
I mention this because this week’s word is one which the younger me would have declared an abomination cooked up by some illiterate hick up in the mountains whose only use for a dictionary was as a prop to stop the kitchen table wobbling.
What a smug little prat I was.
First things first. Irregardless is certainly not to be used when you’re addressing the United Nations and your nation’s credibility is at stake.
But are its users really stupid or ignorant?
If they are, people have been behaving stupidly and ignorantly for a long time. Irregardless appeared in print at least as early as 1795 and has been popping up ever since, mostly in the US.
One plausible explanation for its origin is that it’s a mistaken smooshing up of irrespective and regardless.
But a little caution is advisable. Many words and phrases that look like mistakes are deliberately nonsensical. Think of “cheap at half the price”, “it couldn't have happened to a nicer person” (when someone you despise is suffering), or a favourite expression of my Dad's back on the farm, “that's a good day’s work if we don’t do any more”. If you blast any of those expressions as “wrong”, it's you who’s being a dumbass (thank you again, the US), not their proponents.
(I could add “I could care less” to this list, but that’s probably a whole post on its own. For now, let me say that if you regard that phrase as illiterate, you might want to question your ear for sarcasm.)
No less venerable an organ than the Oxford English Dictionary suggests irregardless may be in a similar class to those idioms above, calling it primarily a “North American colloquialism”. Colloquialism comes from the Latin for conversation, which tells you much of what you need to know. This is the language we use when we’re relaxing with friends and family, and formality jumps up onto the wobbly kitchen table before leaping out the window and running off into the wooded hills of dumbassery. In that case, irregardless might be best regarded as informal - maybe even humorous - rather than wrong.
But that hasn’t stopped people in high places fulminating against its use.
In 1923, The Literary Digest published an article titled Is There Such a Word as Irregardless in the English Language? My efforts to learn its answer have been fruitless. Reader contributions to this search are welcomed.
The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style, meantime, huffily dismissed the word as “semiliterate”. Webster’s 1934 dictionary timidly placed a bet each way, describing irregardless as “an erroneous or humorous form of regardless”.
Fowler’s Modern English Usage, published in 1965, found its own unique solution to this knotty problem: it ignored it. Nowhere, even under the entry for regardless, is irregardless mentioned.
Wimps.
More recently, Merriam-Webster - a dictionary I hold in high esteem - stated that irregardless is, indeed, a word. This was quickly followed by the sound of feathers being ruffled, knickers getting twisted, and cups of tea being spilled in grand lounges everywhere.
These days, I’m with Merriam-Webster, which I’m sure will please them no end. Here’s the thing about words. They don’t care if you don’t like them. Nor do they care if you think they’re real or not. Even if you are an infallible 15-year-old.
The only thing that determines whether a word is real is whether it’s used by enough people over a sufficiently long period. To quote Merriam-Webster:
[Irregardless] has been in use for well over 200 years, employed by a large number of people across a wide geographic range and with a consistent meaning. That is why we, and well-nigh every other dictionary of modern English, define this word.
Note the refusal to get caught up in the merits of the word when deciding whether it’s “real” or not. Merriam-Webster is reporting on what’s going on, not on whether what’s going on should be going on.
That said, Merriam-Webster does also recommend sticking with regardless, which does the job perfectly well and is about as standard as English can get.
That’s good advice. People will judge you by your language choices, and why would you invite them to judge you harshly if you don’t need to?
Where I think people get messed up is in thinking that non-standard usages mark their speakers out as ignorant or stupid.
That’s harsh. Harmful even.
I like what newspaper editor Bill Walsh said about many people's struggles with its and it’s - and believe it’s a mighty fine principle to apply here, if not across the board. “I'm not calling for a usage revolution,” he said, “just for a little compassion.” You say irregardless, believing it to be standard English; I say English is a tough language to master.
And anyone who disagrees with me on that is, as you can probably guess by now, a dumbass, pure and simple.
Bits and specious
Speaking of having a little compassion, if you struggle with when to use who versus whom, you’re in good company. To make sure they don’t screw it up, many people go so far as to use whom when who is called for. Here’s an article from the wonderful Stan Carey on the matter.
The earliest use of the f-word.
University students dumb down their theses just for us. Brilliant.
Quote of the week
[W]omen are more sensitive, considerate, and humble than men, .... arguably one of the least counter-intuitive findings in the social sciences.
Harvard Business Review's droll summation of research into gender differences across 26 different cultures.
Share, share, share
If you know someone who might enjoy Lingwistics, please feel free to share this with them. New subscribers are always welcome.
Love your stories
I really enjoyed this, thanks for posting it. My 15-year-old self was in the same boat. Nowadays, again, I try not to be too intractable with other people's language choices. Irregardless, I still get salty when people use "literally" to mean "figuratively." Ah well, I'm not here to judge. :)