Thursday, July 26, 2007

Needless to say...(but I'm going to say it anyway)

Why would anyone preface anything with these words:
"Needless to say"
If that's true, then DON'T say it.

On the other hand, if women would use this reliably, prefacing all
"fluff" statements with "Needless to say", it would make it a lot
easier for us guys to pick up on what is actually important to
listen to. Just a thought...

Another phrase that people tend to use without really thinking is
"I could care less!"

If they could really care less, then that means that they actually DO
care about the situation, at least more so than they care for some
other stuff.

What they should say in those situations is:
"I couldn't care less!"

Meaning that this is the absolute bottom of their care pile and that,
at this point, there is no way that they could care any less about
anything else.

Regardless wether or not that is true, that is the extreme position
one is normally trying to portray with that phrase.

And that's another thing; "Regardless". We know that it means:
without regard to. Meaning that there is no cause or effect. An
example:
"The game will go on, regardless of weather"

This means that the game will go on no matter what kind of weather
may occur.

Ok, all that to say this; Why do people use the term "irregardless"?

Prefixing a word with "ir" usually negates the word, such as:
rational/irrational
replaceable/irreplaceable
responsible/irresponsible

But at the same time, suffixing a word with "less" has the same
negative effect, such as:
mind/mindless
clue/clueless
thought/thoughtless

So, that brings us back to "irregardless" (which is a real English
word).

The interesting thing about "irregardless" is that it is a double
negative. One could deduce that in this case "regard" and
"irregardless" both mean the exact same thing.

Not so, surprisingly "regardless" and "irregardless" have
the exact same meaning. This pretty much rules out any rational
reason for having both words. One of them should go, namely
"irregardless".

Nope, I ain't not gonna say nothing more about not using no double
negatives, or not.

2 comments:

Kimberly said...

Well said! Why in the heck can't people use proper grammer? Next thing we know "anyways" will be in the dictionary.

Just Another Wiseguy said...

I must assume that you know it already IS in the dictionary, albeit sometimes defined as the "substandard" form of "anyway".

That is another one of my literary pet peaves...

But whatevers! :)