Irregardless is not a word
File this post under “grammatical rants,” which I know are a favorite for everyone. Irregardless… this little gem of a redundant, repetitious, and repetitive word reared its ugly head twice in contexts where it just doesn’t belong. I must draw the line here!
First, I read it in an aikido book. There it was, page 241, staring me in the face. How’d that slip by an editor?
Then, I heard it in a presentation by an executive at my company. He’s a smart guy… why’d that slip into his lexicon?
For those that don’t share my annoyance with this word, let me explain so you, too, can be annoyed: it’s some weird blend of “irrespective” (a fine word, to be sure) and “regardless,” (also an upstanding member of the dictionary). Both of these mean “despite of,” as in Tom loves Katie regardless of his jumping on couches on Oprah, or “Scooter Libby deserves his jail sentence irrespective of his administration connections.” Somewhere along the line someone slipped up and put them together and this Franken-word was born. Kinda like “TomKat,” but not as bad. Or is it worse… I can’t tell; they’re both horrible.
The real trouble with it is that it’s a double negative. The prefix ”ir-” negates what it follows, as in “irrelevant,” which is something that’s not relevant. The suffix “-less” following “regard” negates it. We’re left with: negate + regard + negate = regard. It’s the opposite of what the speaker or writer intends.
Help me and the English language: don’t let people say “irregardless.” Tell them why, and then you’ll be smart and helpful. Would you let a friend say “I don’t not want that”? I didn’t think so.
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A few days back I received an e-mail from a reader informing me of a mistake in my post. In the interests of full disclosure, here’s his post:
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In explaining things you used the expression “despite of.” I don’t think this is correct.
The following was taken from http://www.english-test.net:
“Despite of” is a grammatical error! Inspite of = Despite
1 – Despite the rough weather, she came on time.
2 – Inspite of the rough weather, she came on time.
My own sense of grammar, punctuation and usage is pretty pathetic, but this error caught my eye and I thought you might find the irony of this making this particular error in the context of your rant, humorous, as did I.
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So there it is–I was wrong* and that just goes to show you shouldn’t be too vehement about one’s own grammatical prowess!
*It’s worth noting that “despite of” is incorrect in modern usage, the Bard himself used it extensively. Check out http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/5634/is-it-despite-or-despite-of for a wonderfully detailed write-up on the topic.