Friday, July 13, 2012

Irregardless

Grammar Tutorial #3. If these things bore/annoy you, please feel free to skip this post. I write them down if only to get the irritation out of my own grammatically terrorized head.

So in a work meeting a couple of weeks ago, the word ‘irregardless’ was bandied about at least three times by two of my co-workers.

They were not using this word ironically, either. They were using it in everyday conversation as if it were an actual word.

After the third person spewed this ‘word’ into the conversation, I turned to the woman sitting next to me and hissed, “Irregardless is NOT a word!”

I said it quietly enough that those who were using it as if it were an actual word didn’t hear me because I don’t feel right about actually correcting people to their faces. Sure, I’m more than willing to come here and bitch about them quasi-anonymously but I feel like it would be rude to correct them in front of others.

But…damnit, it really, truly isn’t a word.

The prefix ir- make the resulting word the opposite of the root word. For example, irreparable, which means not repairable. Or irrefutable as in, not refutable. But people who use irregardless are using it as a synonym to regardless. They use these words interchangeably. Even though irregardless isn’t actually a word.

I obviously can’t say/write that often enough. IT IS NOT A WORD. The correct word to use in a conversation is regardless. That’s all.

Ugh.

Regardless of how silly this pet peeve is, it’s mine and so here I am, owning it. (Ha, see what I did there, what with the using of the word regardless properly and all. Yeah, I own it alright.)

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