...and it woke me up!

I am sitting at a conference, after lunch, and the talk is not that inspiring. I am nodding off, and hearing "blah, blah, blah...," wishing for a little caffeine. Then it happend. I heard, "blah, blah, blah, irregardless, blah, blah, blah." That woke me up. I sat stark upright and thought, "ow why does anyone ever use that word? What is the point of it? Regardless completely does the trick."

I remember another time I was having a heated argument with a Republican colleague who likes Bush. She favors the death penalty (which has been suspended in Illinois), and we were having a "spirited" discussion of it. Suddenly she said used the word irregardless. In my passion I said, "That's not even a real word!" What a foolish thing to say because it is a real word and it's even in the OED (albeit, "non-standard").

Why does that word irritate me so? I even wrote a limerick on it for the OEDILF:

Irregardless: An asinine word;
Yet over and over it's heard.
It's silly, inane,
And so foolish — insane!
Its meaning, regardless, is blurred.

Author's Note: Irregardless, while in the dictionaries, is really nonsensical and unnecessary since it means exactly the same as regardless.

When push comes to shove, I suppose I do have major prescriptive tendencies.