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The Debate over "Irregardless" -- is it a Word?

posted by Fnord666 on Monday July 13 2020, @11:53AM   
from the First-to-Fall dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/06/887540598/the-debate-over-the-word-irregardless-is-it-a-word

All right. Let's settle something here. The word irregardless - is it a word or is it not a word? Well, this is a debate that Merriam-Webster is now weighing in on in a tweet saying that it is, in fact, a word. And that has led to a whole lot of reaction online.

Merriam-Webster has confirmed that "irregardless" is a word in the dictionary, despite concerns from teachers that it is not.

So fellow Soylentils, irregardless of my opinion, what do your think?

See Also:
Is 'Irregardless' a Real Word?
Definition of irregardless

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Original Submission

• Double negatives Double negatives (Score: 3, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Monday July 13 2020, @05:46PM (2 children)

  by hendrikboom (1125) on Monday July 13 2020, @05:46PM (#1020531) Homepage Journal

  "Irregardless" is a double negative.

  Since educated Englishmen learned Latin and Greek grammar and logic and imposed it on their understanding of English, the taught rule became that double negatives are positives.

  It wasn't always so. Older English conventions used doubling of a negation to mean a stronger negation.

  And there are languages where a negation, to be properly expressed, needs to be distributed throughout the sentence. Just to be clear.

  I've started using "nor" in negative disjunctions just to make it clear that the negative extends to the entire disjunction, and not just to its first element. English, unlike mathematics, doesn't group using parentheses.

  There appears not to be a dual "nand" in English.

  -- hendrik

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• Re:Double negatives (Score: 2, Funny) by pTamok on Monday July 13 2020, @07:13PM

  by pTamok (3042) on Monday July 13 2020, @07:13PM (#1020583)

  Since educated Englishmen learned Latin and Greek grammar and logic and imposed it on their understanding of English, the taught rule became that double negatives are positives.

  It wasn't always so. Older English conventions used doubling of a negation to mean a stronger negation.

  And there are languages where a negation, to be properly expressed, needs to be distributed throughout the sentence. Just to be clear.

  I am reminded of the joke about a lecture on the English language where the lecturer stated the above and went on to say there were no instances of languages using doubled positives as negatives, to which the response from the audience was a drawl of "Yeeaah, riiiight." from a young member.

  Parent

• Re:Double negatives (Score: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Tuesday July 14 2020, @03:10PM

  by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday July 14 2020, @03:10PM (#1021269)

  Was coming in here to point out the same thing about it being a double-negative.

  English, unlike mathematics, doesn't group using parentheses.

  Do constructions like "there's no way I won't do that" not count, since the negatives are separated in the sentence? And/or does the hypothetical tense disqualify it?

  I've started using "nor" in negative disjunctions

  Then there's also the part where or vs xor in English is a bit ambiguous as well.

  --
  "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"

  Parent