Why do some people say regardless and some say irregardless?

Question

Irregardless is not a word as far as I know yet when watching Court TV, MSNBC, etc., I heat it used all of the time. '-)

P.S. Spellcheck did not pick it up as a misspelling.

Answer 1

Many people say irregardless is not a real word (though I just ran both Yahoo and Google spell check and it passed on both, and Dictionary.com has it - see link below). I think the reality is that it has become a real word over the years of people using it. Personally, I don't use it much, but I know when people do use it - and you have to admit, it can be useful.

Picture the situation: You want to say "regardless", but you want to really emphasize the word, you want to emphasize the regardlessness of it. Unfortunately, you can't say "really regardless" or "regardlesserly, or anything like that. So what do you say? "I don't want to go out with you, IRREGARDLESS of the fact that you are the President of General Motors!" It's perfect.

I am afraid that the people who say you can't use a word like irregardless if you want to are the same people who say the end of a sentence is the place you can't put a preposition in. Ok, that was a silly place to put a preposition - but the point remains that placing prepositions at the end of a sentence, or using the word irregardless, are real English.

Now, are they considered "standard" English? No. I don't think I'd use "irregardless" if I was going on a job interview ("I want to be chief justice of the Supreme Court irregardless of my not being able to read"), trying out for Miss America, or any other place I want to be considered to have good language usage. But for everyday speech, I say go for it - if you want to. If you don't, fine too.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=irregardless

Answer 2

They use 'irregardless' 'cause they're idiots.

Logically and intuitively, 'irregardless' is incorrect and will never be correct no matter how often it's used; it's a double negative.

regard = to consider, take into consideration
regardless = without regard, to not regard, to not consider
ir (prefix) = cancels sth. out, makes it negative (e.g., irrelevant = not relevant; irregular = not regular)
irregardless = to not not regard

Then the 'not nots' of course cancel each other out and you end up saying the opposite of what you meant: you end up saying, 'Please do take this into regard.'

People are generally just inexplicably dense.

Answer 3

People who say irregardless have heard other people say it and so they think it's all right, chances are they will continue to use it regardless of right or wrong.

Answer 4

You are correct irregardless is not a word.
People who use it don't speak no good english!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!