Seen in the paper ...

Wife: ... so she had the nerve to talk about me, irrecgardless of the fact that I had her back last time!
Husband: Regardless.
Wife: What?
Husband: There's no such word as irregardless, my grammar-challenged wife.
Wife: What difference does that make? Everyone uses it.
Husband: Everyone who uses bad English.
Wife: Irregardless of your English acuity, I want a divorce!
Husband: Sure. Right after your trial for murdering the English language.

It seems to me that irregardless is a double negative. Remove both prefix and suffix, which cancel each other, and what have you got?

I suppose that's why those who think that men are from Mars and women are from Venus eventually aver that (he)(she) is a pain in Uranus.

We have discussed this word before at length. Funny that the man is the grammatically correct one here because my impression is that women have better grammar, generally, than men. Of course, this is a generalization, and I realize that some men have better grammar than women (probably every man on this site).

quote:

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Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
It seems to me that irregardless is a double negative. Remove both prefix and suffix, which cancel each other, and what have you got?

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Ah, but to my suprise, ir- is not necessarily a negative.
For example,
irradiate, from in- "in" + radiare "to shine"
irrigate, from in- "in" + rigare "to water, to moisten"

ir- is not necessarily a negative
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You mean, as in irritate?

Now, how about IRRIDENTA? One could apply that term to the present state of affairs in Ir-aq.