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The spectrum of hatred against “irregardless” might be unmatched. Everyone claims to hate the word “moist,” but the dislike is general and jokey: ew, gross, “moist,” bleh. People’s hatred of “irregardless” is specific and vehemently serious: it cannot mean “without regard to” but must mean “with regard to,” so it’s nonsensical and shouldn’t exist; it’s a double negative and therefore not allowable by anyone with sense and judgment; it’s a redundant blend of “irrespective” and “regardless,” and we don’t need it; it is illogical and therefore not a word; it is a hallmark of uneducated speech and shouldn’t be entered into the dictionary. All of these complaints point in one direction: “irregardless” is evidence that English is going to hell, and you, Merriam-Webster, are skipping down the easy path, merrily swinging the handbasket. The truth is I felt for the complainant. “Irregardless” was just wrong, I thought—I knew this deep down at a molecular level, and no dictionary entry was going to convince me otherwise. But sharing my personal linguistic beef with the world was not part of the job, so I buttoned my yap and answered the correspondence. Yes, it’s entered, I said, but please note that it’s marked “nonstandard” (which is a fancy way of saying it’s not accepted by most educated speakers of English) and we have a very long usage paragraph after the one-word definition that explains you should use “regardless” instead. We are duty-bound to record the language as it is used, I concluded, gritting my teeth and mentally sprinkling scare quotes throughout the entire sentence.
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