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“Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

economist.com

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Re: “Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

#81

Post by kazinator »

thechao wrote: post #60
daffy wrote: post #50

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 profi…

Pure conjecture on my part: irregardless is an intensifier of dismissal. It allows the word to start with a vowel. Since (American) English requires exhortations to start with a consonant, it forces the speaker to begin the sound with a glottal stop. Initial glottal stops are markers for interjective cursing, like “‘Asshole!”

The conjecture is likely wrong. Some speakers simply reach for irregardless whenever they want to say "without regard" and are never heard using regardless.

Re: “Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

#82

Post by jt2190 »

daffy wrote: post #50

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 profi…

> 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.

Re: “Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

#83

Post by marcosdumay »

swiley wrote: post #58

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…

> copying other people’s behavior without asking why

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

Re: “Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

#85

Post by sjwright »

throw0101a wrote: post #66
daffy wrote: post #50

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 profi…

> and `flammable'. Which has the same definition as inflammable. This has always been inconceivable in my mind.

Even though I know the correct meanings, no matter how hard I try the word “flammable” sounds to me like “able to flame” while “inflammable” sounds like “incapable of flame”.

I hate English.

Re: “Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

#86

Post by balfirevic »

jt2190 wrote: post #82
daffy wrote: post #50

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 profi…

> 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 o…

> 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?

Re: “Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

#88

Post by webmaven »

bena wrote: post #69
082349872349872 wrote: post #11

> “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.

Shibboleth

No post body was provided.

Re: “Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

#89

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

daffy wrote: post #50

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 profi…

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

One might argue that 'stupid' was originally intended to describe a person of low intelligence and because words aren't sentient, it's a misuse of the word.

It seems like a stupid argument to make, though.

Re: “Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

#90

Post by webmaven »

dgb23 wrote: post #70
tech2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference is the intent. If the intent of the act is the death (or other outcome) of a group of individuals then the act would be mass murder. If however the intent of the act is to use these acts to cause terror (the deaths are merely a means to that end) then the act is terrorism. Terror has been a tool of a number of political groups over the years. An easy example would be when the IRA bombing campai…

I like this definition very much. However, would you for example include propaganda, which is specifically designed to spread fear? I always associated terrorism with physical violence.

> However, would you for example include propaganda, which is specifically designed to spread fear? I always associated terrorism with physical violence.

Propaganda in the form of "$OUTGROUP are all murderers and rapists" is just fearmongering rather than terrorism, propaganda that threatens violence directly (eg. "Kill all $OUTGROUP") might be considered such, esp. if there is any reason to think that the propaganda is at all likely to be acted upon (so, if $OUTGROUP is "clowns" I don't think it would currently qualify, but "banksters" might).

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