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In early July 2020, social media users asked Snopes.com to verify whether it was true that the Merriam-Webster dictionary had newly recognized irregardless as a word in the English language. Irregardless has long been stigmatized as a non-word that has the opposite meaning of its intended use. So when rumor spread that irregardless had been newly enshrined on the pages of Merriam-Webster dictionaries, it prompted some readers to post in jest that 2020, the year marked by the coronavirus pandemic, had just gotten worse: It's true that on July 3, Merriam-Webster included the word irregardless in its Word of the Week roundup, apparently prompted by a Twitter user declaring the English language to be dead: Despite gaining new notoriety online, the word isn't a recent dictionary addition. A Merriam-Webster spokesperson told NPR that irregardless has appeared in the pages of its Unabridged dictionary edition since 1934, and, as NPR reported, other dictionaries -- including Webster's New World College Dictionary, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and the Cambridge Dictionary -- all recognize irregardless as a word: In its July 3 Words of the Week post, Merriam-Webster poked some fun at the internet outrage over irregardless: But irregardless has been in widespread and near-constant use since 1795, along with other commonly used words such as citizenry and terrorism. Merriam-Webster categorizes the word irregardless as nonstandard, meaning, not conforming in pronunciation, grammatical construction, idiom, or word choice to the usage generally characteristic of educated native speakers of a language. The word is probably derived from a blend of irrespective and regardless. The word irregardless is defined simply as regardless, according to its definition in the dictionary.
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