Welcome to the Grammar Minute, where we’re saving the English language sixty seconds at a time! I’m Lauren Smyth, and if you’re the kind of person who willingly listens to this show, you probably already know that irregardless is a bad word. So bad that I may faint after saying it. But what you might not know is exactly why it’s wrong.

It turns out that “ir” is a negative prefix, and “regardless” is also a negative. Squishing them together to produce the already mentioned abomination creates a double negative, sort of like I haven’t never seen something so bad or I won’t never say that. Double negatives are frowned upon because at best, they’re redundant, and at worst, they can actually end up meaning exactly the opposite of what you want to say. Technically, irregardless means “not regardless,” or “with regards.”

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