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Merriam-Webster Officially Weighs Into ‘Irregardless’ Debate, Posts Snarky Comment In Response To Critics

   DailyWire.com
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Last week, 189-year-old dictionary company Merriam-Webster confirmed that “irregardless” is a word in their dictionary, despite dissent from educators.

In a tweet published Wednesday, a Twitter user posted a screenshot of “irregardless” defined in the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary, captioning the photo, “It was a good run, English language.”

In a snarky response, the official Twitter account for the dictionary responded, “Yep. English is literally dead.”

On Merriam-Webster’s web pages, the dictionary says “irregardless” is “certainly a word,” even if it “may not be a word that you like, or a word that you would use in a term paper.”

“It has been in use for well over 200 years,” the site says, “employed by a large number of people across a wide geographic range and with a consistent meaning. That is why we, and well-nigh every other dictionary of modern English, define this word.”

The dictionary company claims irregardless” has the same meaning as “regardless.”

“Many people find irregardless to be a nonsensical word, as the ir– prefix usually functions to indicates negation; however, in this case it appears to function as an intensifier,” Merriam-Webster says. “Similar ir– words, while rare, do exist in English, including irremediless (‘remediless’), irresistless (‘resistless’) and irrelentlessly (‘relentlessly’).”

Instead of “slang,” irregardless is defined as “nonstandard” by Merriam-Webster, meaning “not conforming in pronunciation, grammatical construction, idiom, or word choice to the usage generally characteristic of educated native speakers of a language.”

Speaking to NPR, teacher and author Michelle Ray told the outlet that despite the dictionary’s assertion, “irregardless” is “not a real word.”

“First of all, it’s a double negative. … In what context would ‘irregardless’ make sense?” she asked.

“I hope we’re not just going down the path that whatever people say is correct, because I’ll still be sitting around grading papers going, ‘nope, nope, nope,'” Ray added.

Last month, the dictionary changed the definition of the word “racism,” after a 22-year-old woman made a complaint about the previous, supposedly limited definition.

“Kennedy Mitchum, a recent college graduate from Missouri, made the complaint following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died last month after a police officer had his knee on the 46-year-old’s neck for over eight minutes during an arrest, as shown in viral video footage,” The Daily Wire reported at the time.

“I said this is the last argument I’m going to have about this,” explained Mitchum. “I know what racism is, I’ve experienced it time and time and time again in a lot of different ways, so enough is enough. So, I emailed [Merriam-Webster] about how I felt about it. Saying this needs to change.”

“I basically told them they need to include that there is systematic oppression on people,” the recent Drake University grad added. “It’s not just ‘I don’t like someone,’ it’s a system of oppression for a certain group of people.”

Related: Merriam-Webster Changes Definition Of ‘Racism’ After 22-Year-Old Woman’s Complaint

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