Merriam-Webster raised the hackles of stodgy grammarians last week when it affirmed the lexical veracity of "irregardless."
The word's definition, when reading it, would seem to be: without without regard.
"Irregardless is included in our dictionary because it has been in widespread and near-constant use since 1795," the dictionary's staff wrote in a "Words of the Week" roundup on Friday. "We do not make the English language, we merely record it."
Merriam-Webster defines irregardless as "nonstandard" but meaning the same 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," the dictionary writes.
> "We do not make the English language, we merely record it."
Which is an evasion, because they know they are respected as an authority on the language and therefore they do actually make the language, or at least legitimise mis-use.