If “irregardless” is in the dictionary, is it correct?

By Michael Caesar C. Tubal

Few words seem to irritate grammar-conscious readers as quickly as irregardless. For years, many of us have been taught that the only acceptable form is regardless and that irregardless is unnecessary, illogical, or simply wrong. The usual explanation is that regardless already means “without regard,” so adding the prefix ir- is redundant. It is the kind of argument that sounds sensible enough that we rarely stop to ask whether language has ever really behaved according to neat rules of logic.

Then someone checks the dictionary and discovers that irregardless is there. This usually creates an even bigger argument. If the dictionary includes it, does that mean it is correct? Has a mistake somehow become acceptable just because enough people have made it? Not quite. What the argument really shows is that many of us misunderstand what dictionaries are meant to do. A dictionary does not simply decide which words people are allowed to use. It also records the words people are already using, including those that are informal, regional, controversial, old-fashioned, or nonstandard.

Merriam-Webster, for example, recognizes irregardless and labels it “nonstandard.” The word is not a recent invention, either. Merriam-Webster traces its documented use to 1795. This does not mean that irregardless and regardless have exactly the same standing. Regardless remains the standard and safer choice, particularly in formal writing. But saying that irregardless is “not a word” is difficult to defend when English speakers have been using it for more than two centuries and dictionaries have plenty of evidence of that use.

This is where dictionary-making becomes interesting. Lexicographers do not simply sit around a table inventing words and deciding which ones the public may use. They study language. Modern dictionaries draw on books, newspapers, conversations, websites, and large electronic collections of language called corpora. These sources help lexicographers determine whether a word is actually being used, what it means, how frequently it occurs, and in what contexts it appears. Corpus evidence has become an important part of contemporary lexicography precisely because dictionaries are expected to reflect real language use (Frankenberg-Garcia, 2012).

William Shakespeare provides a useful historical example. We have probably encountered claims that Shakespeare “invented” hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of English words. Popular lists credit him with words such as gloomy and eyeball. It is an appealing story: Shakespeare was a linguistic genius, so perhaps he simply created words whenever English failed him. The truth, however, is more complicated.

For many words, what scholars could actually say was that Shakespeare provided the earliest known written example available to dictionary editors. That is not the same as proving that he invented the word. It may already have been circulating in speech, or it may have appeared in an earlier text that researchers had not yet found. As more historical texts have become searchable, earlier examples of some supposedly Shakespearean coinages have surfaced. Hope (2017), for instance, questions popular claims about words such as gloomy and eyeball. The Shakespeare story therefore tells us something important about dictionaries: they work with evidence, and the record can change when better evidence becomes available.

The same principle helps explain irregardless. Dictionaries did not put the word into English. Speakers did. Lexicographers found enough evidence of its continued use to record it. The entry tells us one linguistic fact: irregardless exists and is understood. Its usage label tells us another: it remains nonstandard. Those facts are not contradictory.

Debates about “correct English” often overlook this distinction. A word can exist without being appropriate everywhere. A form can be widely understood while still attracting criticism in formal writing. Dictionaries contain slang, vulgar expressions, regional words, obsolete terms, and nonstandard forms. Nobody would argue that everything appearing between the covers of a dictionary belongs in an academic paper or a business letter. Usage labels such as informal, regional, dated, and nonstandard are there precisely because context matters. As Mugglestone (2016) explains, dictionaries occupy a complicated space between describing language and offering guidance about its use.

So, are irregardless and regardless both acceptable? It depends on what we mean by acceptable. Both are established words in the sense that both occur in English, are understood by speakers, and are recorded by dictionaries. They do not, however, have the same status. Regardless is standard and appropriate across a much wider range of contexts. Irregardless remains nonstandard and can easily distract readers, especially in edited or formal writing. If a student asked me which one to use in a research paper, I would recommend regardless. If someone insisted that irregardless is “not a word,” I would disagree.

Dictionaries are neither museums preserving English exactly as it once was nor courts issuing final rulings on what speakers may say. They document a language that keeps moving. Shakespeare reminds us that even the history of a word can be revised when new evidence turns up. Irregardless reminds us that disliking a word does not make it disappear.

The status of irregardless as a word derives from its established use among English speakers, rather than its inclusion in a dictionary. The dictionary documents that usage.

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Michael Caesar C. Tubal teaches language, literature, and pedagogy at West Visayas State University College of Education. In his free time, if he is not reading or writing, he watches past episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race or joins book clubs in Iloilo City.