
“Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words - helsinkiandrew
https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2020/07/25/the-shadowlands-of-language
======
Jedd
I recall my mum, it must have been in the 1980's, engaging in much eye-rolling
and tut-tutting at our (Australia) then prime minister, Bob Hawke, using the
word 'irregardless'. Bob was ostensibly quite charismatic, but no one could
accuse him of being an especially thoughtful communicator.

In retrospect it's fairly typical behaviour for less literate types to adopt a
word that _sounds_ sophisticated beyond their standard repertoire , and assume
it's sufficiently cromulent for formal use. (A very recent thread on HN was
around the use of the word 'decimate' as an alternative spelling for
'destroy', for similar reasons.)

I think Boris Johnson is a profoundly bad force in the universe, but I do
recall feeling the editing of one of his appearances on a UK TV show (Have I
Got News For You) was patently unfair, as he was asserting that calling small
four wheeled vehicles 'quad-bikes' was etymologically unsound. His point (I
imagine - the broadcast did not include the justification) was that 'bike' is
a corruption of bicycle, in turn rooted from 'bi', referring to the two
wheels.

~~~
ergothus
> In retrospect it's fairly typical behaviour for less literate types to adopt
> a word that sounds sophisticated beyond their standard repertoire

This seems an excessively negative take on it.

How do we learn new words? Sure, we COULD look up the definitions, but (1) who
bothers, and (2) we have plenty of evidence that definitions are so vague as
to be useless. (I recall arguing with my high school english teacher about
"moot", which we had as aa vocab word with a definition that didn't match my
colloquial understanding).

So as adults, as teens, tweens, and before, most of our language is learned
from contextual usage. Which is a terrible way to maintain accuracy. When I
get stumped with newer terminology, my friends that USE the new words are
often at a loss to explain them (one spent 30 mins trying to explain "kappa")
because they don't know a formal definition, they know it when they see it.

We can be smug and superior about the "less literate" trying to be impressive,
but honestly, that applies to all of us, we are just mocking those that get
caught.

~~~
Jedd
Yes, I concede it's a bit of a bugbear - apologies for the negativity.

The idea that not spending the requisite minute or so to look up meaning and
usage of a new word is acceptable behaviour of adults seems depressingly
defeatist. We don't consider this an acceptable attitude during a child's
dozen or more years of formal education, and realistically most adults have
easy & rapid access to authoritative sources.

That our languages should then be _(re)defined_ by these torpid users -- well
that's just a horrible deal.

------
swiley
The popularity of the word “irregardless” demonstrates a property of human
thought and socialization that’s very important to most people here: that the
majority of people (at least those that speak English) are perfectly happy
copying other people’s behavior without asking why. More complex examples of
this come from studies where people struggle to communicate the difference
between Boolean operators (specifically OR and XOR.)

My point is that this is a reminder of why we have software engineers and why
cheap contractors, AI, and easier to use tooling (such as “graphical
programming languages) haven’t been able to replace them: people think and
speak too imprecisely to communicate even just software specifications
correctly let alone implement them.

~~~
marcosdumay
> copying other people’s behavior without asking why

Yielding to a shared meaning is the entire point of language.

~~~
uniqueid
Indeed. If we didn't slavishly imitate the language of people around us, we'd
have no languages at all. Even as things are, it takes a decade and a half for
most people to master their own tongue.

------
daffy
The author seems to claim that `irregardless' is all right and that caring
about it is caring too much and vain. He compares it to other malformed words
such as `television' and `flammable'. But there seems to be a significant
difference between these and that. While recognizing the malformedness of
these words require knowledge of Greek and Latin, recognizing that of
`irregardless' is trivial for anyone who is proficient in current English: it
is obviously a stupid word, and that makes it stupider.

~~~
jt2190
> it is obviously a stupid word, and that makes it stupider.

This is the social signaling aspect of language at work, not the communication
part.

Human brains can trivially digest the correct meaning of “irregardless”. Using
the word, however, marks someone as not having had a “proper” education, and
would perhaps brand the speaker as “stupid”, “irregardless” of whether the
idea they were expressing was intelligent or not.

~~~
balfirevic
> Human brains can trivially digest the correct meaning of “irregardless”.

It can also understand the meaning of "iregardles", "ireggardless" and
"irregardlless". Is that really a sufficient condition for the word to be
considered correct?

~~~
amanaplanacanal
Given that the purpose of language is to convey meaning, I'd say yes.

~~~
ryandrake
if meerly "convaying meening" iz the bar then tihs snentenennce is currect
english.

~~~
kmm
You'll find that people, even those without formal education in English like
me, don't generally write like that. I think just reading and writing a lot
makes one's spelling naturally converge to the most common one.

------
irthomasthomas
My favorite/worst example of language evolution is the word factoid. Factoid
literally meant a thing _resembling_ a fact (i.e. a _false_ fact) which is
believed to be true after being repeated in print. Now, those same writers who
where presumably spreading factoids, have inverted its meaning to be 'a minor,
but _true_ fact' [0].

[0]
[http://www.doctoryourself.com/hoffer_factoids.html](http://www.doctoryourself.com/hoffer_factoids.html)

~~~
vbtemp
Would a more correct version of a minor, true fact be a _factino_? Kind of
like a Plutino or Neutrino?

~~~
jwilk
_factlet_ (like _piglet_ )

~~~
daffy
But that would be mixing Latin and English, just as bad as television!

~~~
WarOnPrivacy
factette then.

------
WarOnPrivacy
"Dethaw" \- to unfreeze something prior to cooking. It's something my ex
imprinted on my kids.

The court was quick to give me custody, once I brought that up.

------
ukj
Language evolves. Use and meaning of words changes over time.

Logocentrists are surprised.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logocentrism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logocentrism)

~~~
twelvechairs
English evolves because it is polycentric. Other languages are held back by
formal regulators from evolving (e.g. Association of Spanish Language
Academies, Académie française, Council for German Orthography, China's State
Language Work Committee, etc.)

------
WarOnPrivacy
I feel the evolution of language reflects important details about the culture
wielding it.

I think a strong example is the word 'cult'. It once referred to a small sect
or faith - and that's all. Leaders of established sects so often demonized
small, competing faiths that cult became redefined to refer to evil and
dangerous groups of worshipers. Notably, no other word ever emerged to take
it's place.

I really wanted a tool to evidence how changes in language reflected changes
in society's beliefs. I figured an authoritarian source of English definitions
would be that tool but there isn't any such thing.*

In the end I had to adopt the more difficult approach of finding examples that
my audience could relate with.

* (For a time I believed that the Oxford English Dictionary was that source, due to the 60-odd years between the 1st and 2nd editions. I didn't realize tho that supplements were added on an ongoing basis.)

------
jasode
The actress Jamie Lee Curtis complained about MW's addition of " _irregardless
"_ because she misunderstands the _purpose_ of that dictionary: to document
and describe _actual_ language usage. Therefore, if "irregardless" is in wide
common usage, it gets added as an entry.

Dictionaries that are more descriptive than prescriptive: _The Oxford English
Dictionary_ and _Merriam-Webster Dictionary_. (e.g. "whatevs", "chillax",
other slang, etc added to OED:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=newest+words+in+Oxford+Engli...](https://www.google.com/search?q=newest+words+in+Oxford+English+Dictionary))

A dictionary that is more prescriptive (more conservative and avoids adding
new non-standard words): _The American Heritage Dictionary of the English
Language_
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Heritage_Dictiona...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Heritage_Dictionary_of_the_English_Language))

tldr: most people don't know the _underlying rationale_ of dictionaries

some Youtube links...

deep link of Kory Stamper @ Merriam-Webster talking about adding nonstandard
word "irregardless" to the dictionary:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLgn3geod9Q&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLgn3geod9Q&feature=youtu.be&t=4m20s)

Anne Curzan (advisor role on Usage Panel) for American Heritage Dictionary
explaining _" what makes a word 'real'?"_:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6NU0DMjv0Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6NU0DMjv0Y)

[to downvoters: it would be helpful if you state what's incorrect in my post;
I don't want to give out bad information. Thank you.]

~~~
bryanrasmussen
I guess I'd just assume she had a prescriptive personality type and preferred
the dictionary she happened to look at to have the same view of language.

------
kazinator
Merriam-Webster labels the word as "nonstandard" and recommends that
regardless be used, all the while assuring readers that "irregardless" is
indeed a word that has been in use by English speakers for "well over 200
years" and by "a large number of people across a wide geographic range and
with a consistent meaning".

And, note, that same dictionary makes no disparaging remarks about the abuse
of "literally" as a generic intensifier; it simply cites that usage as one of
the meanings. The abuse of "literally" is more recent than "irregardless".

That tells you that "irregardless" is quite the lexical pariah. A major
dictionary like Merriam is not able to wholeheartedly accept it in spite of
the word's age and stability.

~~~
mjburgess
> The abuse of "literally" is more recent than "irregardless".

It certainly is not. The _complaints_ are recent. This usage is hundreds of
years old.

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/misuse-of-
lite...](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/misuse-of-literally)

~~~
kazinator
I strongly suspect that a new class of abuse is recent.

 _literally_ is actually reasonable as an intensifer for a figurative
situation. I.e. the speaker is asking you to forget that you're just using an
extreme figure of speech for a situation that is actually mild, but instead
imagine it literally happening. I.e. the situation I'm describing is in fact
so intense, that please pay attention to the figure of speech, since it is
utterly fitting.

What we have now is _literally_ just being applied randomly where there is no
figure of speech, or not even a plausible figure of speech, as in:

> _I literally just moved here from New York last week; do you know where I
> can get a decent bagel?_

Here, "literally" doesn't inform us that a plausible metaphor is actual
("moved here from New York" is not a common figure of speech with a special
meaning, and is vanishingly unlikely to be interpreted as such), and doesn't
ask us to get a more intense sense of a metaphor by imagining it as actually
happening: the move actually happened, that's all.

The word is just a morsel of pure verbiage.

------
cafard
"""(It's _regardless_ , Caroline, not _irregardless_ ," Lorena said gently.
Caroline huffily replied that regardless was a footless, weak word and got you
nowhere, that on the other hand you threw in the word _irregardless_ and won
any argument hands down."""

Dawn Powell, _The Locusts Have No King_

------
trynumber9
If it makes you feel better it's not widely used:

[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=regardless%2Ci...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=regardless%2Cirregardless&year_start=1880&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3#)

~~~
Emma_Goldman
It's scarcely surprising that it's not used in print. Books are considered,
written by those most proficient in English, read and re-read, and
professionally proof-read.

The extent of its use in ordinary conversation is something else entirely.

------
daffy
I wonder, are there any statistics on descriptivist and prescriptivist
attitudes in various groups? Or any recent defenses of prescriptivism?

------
neonate
[https://archive.is/0knTf](https://archive.is/0knTf)

------
heinrich5991
[https://archive.is/0knTf](https://archive.is/0knTf)

------
wdr1
Its ironic how upset people get over the use of "irregardless."

------
SamReidHughes
"Disregardless" still gets no respect.

------
throw7
paywall (didn't read). I had a co-worker who used to use irregardless. I
didn't say anything. My own personal pet-peeve is the phrase "that begs the
question...", and then the speaker raises a question. No. That's not begging
the question. sigh.

At this point in "post post-modernism"? I guess my line in the sand is
pronunciation of proper nouns. Cue the "gif" vs "jif" debate.

------
smitty1e
Caring about grammar may indicate one stands with the wide soup rim assists.

------
082349872349872
> “irregardless: a word that distinguishes people who do not care much about
> English usage from those who care terribly—and want the world to know it.”

In other words, a sibboleth?

Exercise for hackers: what are the minimal code sequences one can write to
distinguish between various x86 versions? various python versions? etc.

~~~
bena
Shibboleth

~~~
webmaven
<whoosh>

