I was wondering what the origin of the Americanism “irregardless” is please?
Having spent a good amount of time in your fair land, I feel that it’s time we stamped down hard on such poor word craft - wouldn’t you agree? I cringe every time I hear it and have to say in my most haughty Queen’s English “There’s no such expletive deleted word as “irregardless”, as irregardless simply means regardless”
Thoughts?
Brit-Guy
Wikipedia has an entire article on the word, apparently it may have come from West Indiana as a possible portmanteau of “irrespective” and “regardless”, but nobody knows for sure.
Like inflammable?
It’s a perfectly cromulent word.
I’ve often wondered about that word. Is the in- prefix really the en- prefix, just spelled differently? And, if so, why is it spelled differently?
According to dictionary.com it is indeed the same prefix as “en”, but it’s also the same “in” as in “incarcerate.”
The first 2 characters of both words are superfluous.
Although “inflammable” is often criticized as having a superfluous prefix, it derives from the verb “inflame”. It is a perfectly good adjective. One could even argue that it’s a better word than “flammable” because there is no such word as “flam” that means “to set on fire.”
“Irregardless” OTOH is truly redundant because the prefix and the suffix both negate the root word.
As for early sightings of “irregardless,” that Wikipedia page needs to be amended. We’ve now found an instance of “irregardless” appearing in 1795 (Charleston, South Carolina), with a whole lot more published ca. 1861, clearly antedating that 1912 sighting. (The OED still retains that 1912 sighting as an early example.)
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0705A&L=ADS-L&P=R10051
unirregardless i agree with your complaint.
The point of using “flammable” was because the in- prefix means “not” (e.g., “incomplete”) most of the time. It was an easy mistake to see “inflammable” and think it means “not able to catch fire,” sometimes with disastrous results. No one makes that mistake with “flammable,” so this is one case where a language change has a clear, logical rationale.
This thread has really piqued my unirregardlessnessability.
Cromulent shouldn’t be cromulent.
What a country!
“Irregardless” is part of the lingo of the middle-management meatball, who is a cultural anti-hero greatly treasured by us Yanks. We much prefer his company to that of prissy, overdressed elocutionists. At least the meatball is one of us - he makes his numbers, mows his grass, and has seen Sunday’s game. Can Prof. Effetus Wordsphincter say the same? Hell, I wouldn’t even want him teaching my children. If I had any.
Not exactly like. Something can be inflamed, but it can’t be irregarded.
Here’s another one: invisible, versus unvisible. Shouldn’t there be that second word?
If something is unvisible, it means it’s there but not seen. If invisible, then no one realizes something is there, right?
Thanks
Q
You mean, it should be incromulent.
When I taught school (early, early in my career). I corrected one of my students for the word “irregardless” and told him if he insisted this was correct, then why shouldn’t "anti-nonirregardless) be correct? He never made the mistake again in an essay he wrote for me.
Q
Noncromulent. Incromulent means the same thing as cromulent.