From: Todd Benson <caduceass@...>
Date: 2007-07-21T09:07:52+09:00
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Religion (was: god 0.1.0 released)

On 7/20/07, Chad Perrin <perrin@apotheon.com> wrote:

> I'm particularly annoyed by "irregardless" because anyone that pays
> attention to the construction of words at all can actually piece together
> an understanding of what the world would *really* mean, based on its
> parts -- and no amount of "descriptivism" will change that unless the
> meaning of the root word itself is altered.
>
> . . . in which case "regardless" would come to mean something else
> entirely.  Since that hasn't happened, "irregardless" is still, in
> current usage, *wrong*.

I agree.  I don't envision us seeing formal use of that word during
our lifetimes, and personally don't want to see it happen.  Something
about that ir- and -less in the same word...

I just brought it up because I think time has a tendency to formalize
what once was casual, and trivially cast aside what once was set in
stone, with little or no care of your or my feelings about the matter.
 It seemed to me that Hal was suggesting this happens simply because
of ignoramuses throwing words this way and that.  No grammatical
discipline, darn it!  Those silly poets and their licenses.

In any case, I think you may be talking about the way it should be,
and I'm talking about the way it is.  Of course, most of us logistical
folk shield ourselves from such nonsense by labeling words in our
dictionaries as "formal", "casual", "colloqial", "slang", or
"nonstandard", even though such appellations fail to be mutually
exclusive.

Todd