We’ve had to endure quite a bit in 2020 thus far. COVID-19, murder hornets, civil unrest etc. But this? This might actually be the point at which 2020 has officially crossed the line.
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After years of improper usage, the word “irregardless” has officially been recognised by Merriam-Webster who have included it in the latest edition of their famed dictionary.
According to Merriam-Webster, who are supposed to be a trusted authority on the English language:
irregardless may not be a word that you like, or a word that you would use in a term paper, but irregardless certainly is a word. It has been in use for well over 200 years, employed by a large number of people across a wide geographic range and with a consistent meaning. That is why we, and well-nigh every other dictionary of modern English, define this word.
Basically, if enough dumb people use the wrong word for long enough, it becomes a new word.
Personally, I prefer Urban Dictionary’s definition of “irregardless”:
Used by people who ignorantly mean to say regardless. According to Webster, it is a word, but since the prefix, “ir” and the suffix “less” both mean “not or with” they cancel each other out, so what you end up with is ‘regard.’ When you use this to try to say you don’t care about something, you end up saying that you do.
Now obviously language evolves and it make sense that words like ‘twerk’ of ‘selfie’ would be added to the dictionary because those are things that previously didn’t exist and so we needed to create words to describe them. But “irregardless” is just a word that people have been using incorrectly in place of ‘regardless’, and now it somehow means the same thing?
In addition, whoever runs the Merriam-Webster Twitter account has gone into full-on troll mode, taking the piss out of anyone who has a problem with “irregardless”:
Yep. English is literally dead. https://t.co/hGVXeSNDV7
— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) July 1, 2020
— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) July 1, 2020
We’ll be sure to pass these complaints on to the editors of our 1934 edition.
— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) July 2, 2020
So is this officially the worst thing to happen in 2020 thus far? It just might be. It’s like someone has just thrown the rule book out the window and now anything goes. Come to think of it, maybe the real reason “irregardless” was added to the dictionary was because the word itself was offended that it wasn’t included? Remember, it’s 2020 after all and it’s all about inclusiveness. Maybe Merriam-Webster found it necessary to add the word to the dictionary so that it wouldn’t have its feelings hurt?
Just a theory, because it’s a real struggle to explain this any other way. Irregardless of this, “irregardless” is still not a real word, even though I just used it in a sentence while also understanding the meaning I was trying to convey. Oh crap, I need to lie down.
For the time Alexandra Burke claimed the introduced the phrase ‘elephant in the room’ to the UK, click HERE.
