We darn well love the sound of irregardless. It’s a four-syllable word from the wrong side of the dictionary, we know; but one should never send a three-syllable word to do the work clearly intended for a four-syllable roustabout.
Hence irregardless, presented here defiantly without the snooty and predictable [sic]. We understand that this is a non-standard usage employed by non-standard people. Nonetheless, we’re suggesting that you try out irregardless in a sentence three times today to make it yours. (After all, standard people can be such a dag.)
Besides, irregardless is in the dictionary—several of them. We begin with Merriam-Webster, which has a way with words.
“We define irregardless, even though this act hurts the feelings of many . . . Do we enjoy causing pain? Have we abdicated our role as arbiter of all that is good and pure in the English language? These are all excellent questions (well, these are all questions), and you might ask them of some of these other fine dictionaries, all of whom also appear to enjoy causing pain through the defining of tawdry words.”
irregardless: Regardless–The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition, 2018
irregardless: In nonstandard or humorous use: regardless.–The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, 1976
irregardless: without attention to, or despite the conditions or situation; regardless–Cambridge Dictionary (dictionary.cambridge.org), 2018
“The reason we, and these dictionaries above, define irregardless is very simple: it meets our criteria for inclusion. This word has been used by a large number of people (millions) for a long time (over two hundred years) with a specific and identifiable meaning (“regardless”) . . . The fact that the word is generally viewed as nonstandard, or as illustrative of poor education, is likewise not important; dictionaries define the breadth of the language, and not simply the elegant parts at the top.
“We must confess that of the charges leveled against irregardless, the one asserting that it is not actually a word puzzles us most. If irregardless is not a word, then what is it, and why is it exciting so many people who care about words? Of course it is a word . . . to deny that [irregardless] is a word is to deny the obvious.”
Who are we to argue with dictionaries? Or to deny the obvious? Happy National Irregardless Day.
