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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

#101

Post by baddox »

minitoar wrote: post #56
irthomasthomas wrote: post #51

My favorite/worst example of language evolution is the word factoid. Factoid literally meant a thing resembling a fact (i.e. a false fact) which is believed to be true after being repeated in print. Now, those same writers who where presumably spreading factoids, have inverted its meaning to be 'a minor, but true fact' [0]. [0] http://www.doctoryourself.com/hoffer_factoids.html

Sort of an odd use of the “oid” suffix which means “like” or “resembling”. “Like a fact, but not”.

I always thought “meteoroid” was an odd term. It’s something like a meteor, except it hasn’t entered the atmosphere. It’s like calling a slice of bread a toastoid.

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

#102

Post by baddox »

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…

Except if you are actually well-educated then you would know that “irregardless” is widely used to mean the same thing as “regardless” and thus to use it as such would not be a sign of a lack of education.

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

#103

Post by ryandrake »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #100
balfirevic wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Given that the purpose of language is to convey meaning, I'd say yes.

if meerly "convaying meening" iz the bar then tihs snentenennce is currect english.

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

#105

Post by kmm »

ryandrake wrote: post #103
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that the purpose of language is to convey meaning, I'd say yes.

if meerly "convaying meening" iz the bar then tihs snentenennce is currect english.

You'll find that people, even those without formal education in English like me, don't generally write like that. I think just reading and writing a lot makes one's spelling naturally converge to the most common one.

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

#106

Post by marton78 »

lou1306 wrote: post #73
throw0101a wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Similarly infuriating fact: in Italian, "infranto" means broken, but "infrangibile" means "unbreakable" (as in glass).

And how do you say breakable?

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

#107

Post by mjburgess »

kazinator wrote: post #78

Merriam-Webster labels the word as "nonstandard" and recommends that regardless be used, all the while assuring readers that "irregardless" is indeed a word that has been in use by English speakers for "well over 200 years" and by "a large number of people across a wide geographic range and with a consistent meaning". And, note, that same dictionary makes no disparaging remarks about the abuse of "literally" as a gen…

> The abuse of "literally" is more recent than "irregardless".

It certainly is not. The complaints are recent. This usage is hundreds of years old.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/misuse-of-lite...

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

#108

Post by uniqueid »

marcosdumay wrote: post #83
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.

Indeed. If we didn't slavishly imitate the language of people around us, we'd have no languages at all. Even as things are, it takes a decade and a half for most people to master their own tongue.

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

#109

Post by ergothus »

Jedd wrote: post #71

I recall my mum, it must have been in the 1980's, engaging in much eye-rolling and tut-tutting at our (Australia) then prime minister, Bob Hawke, using the word 'irregardless'. Bob was ostensibly quite charismatic, but no one could accuse him of being an especially thoughtful communicator. In retrospect it's fairly typical behaviour for less literate types to adopt a word that sounds sophisticated beyond their standa…

> In retrospect it's fairly typical behaviour for less literate types to adopt a word that sounds sophisticated beyond their standard repertoire

This seems an excessively negative take on it.

How do we learn new words? Sure, we COULD look up the definitions, but (1) who bothers, and (2) we have plenty of evidence that definitions are so vague as to be useless. (I recall arguing with my high school english teacher about "moot", which we had as aa vocab word with a definition that didn't match my colloquial understanding).

So as adults, as teens, tweens, and before, most of our language is learned from contextual usage. Which is a terrible way to maintain accuracy. When I get stumped with newer terminology, my friends that USE the new words are often at a loss to explain them (one spent 30 mins trying to explain "kappa") because they don't know a formal definition, they know it when they see it.

We can be smug and superior about the "less literate" trying to be impressive, but honestly, that applies to all of us, we are just mocking those that get caught.

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

#110

Post by kazinator »

Udik wrote: post #98
thechao wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno: perhaps irregardless began as an interjection, and then became the norm for certain speakers? Similar to hypercorrection.

Just a mix-up of irrespectively and regardless.

Plus, blindly copying a word used by others. "If my geography teacher used it, it must be right."
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