Early appearances of "irregardless"

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:27 PM -0400 5/4/07, sagehen wrote:
>  >At 12:48 AM -0400 5/4/07, James C Stalker wrote:
>>>Unthaw is not uncommon in adult language.  Perhaps we are dealing with overt
>>>and covert negatives?  Break = undo, unmake; thaw = unfreeze.
>>>
>>>JCS
>>
>>I've actually written a couple of papers on un-verbs addressing this
>>very issue.  My claim (following, although not precisely, some
>>observations of Whorf on "cryptotypes" as well as a suggestion of
>>Michael Covington) is that un-verbs occur most naturally (and
>>relatively productively, especially in the speech of children between
>>3 1/2 and 5 1/2 or so) when they restore a natural state. In some
>>cases, as with "unthawing" but obviously not "unfreezing", this will
>>produce a verb identical in meaning with a simple verb (or one sense
>>of a simpler verb) with that same meaning, in which case the result
>>will be felt to be redundant.  To quote myself:
>>
>>When the prefix attaches to a positive, goal-oriented accomplishment
>>verb, the state-change depicted by the un-verb is one which in effect
>>helps entropy along, rather than creating or restoring order.  But
>>when un- attaches to a verb stem which itself denotes an
>>entropy-producing, inherently negative or source-oriented
>>accomplishment, the resultant un-verb can only be understood with
>>pleonastic reversal, as equivalent to its base, denoting an action of
>>removal, liberation, or (de)privation.
>>
>>There is pressure (both language-internal and prescriptivist) against
>>such innovations; forms like "unloose(n)" have been ridiculed as
>>illogical for hundreds of years, but they do serve a function, since
>>the meaning of the un-verb (or redundant unXless adjective) will be
>>unambiguously entropic, while the meaning of the bare verb might not
>>be so obvious.  This is why Amelia Bedelia, the proverbial literalist
>>housekeeper of the Peggy Parish children's stories, exclaims on
>>reading an instruction to dust the furniture, "Did you ever hear tell
>>of such a silly thing?  At my house we undust the furniture.  But
>>each to his own way."  And she happily proceeds with her dusting,
>>with the help of some fragrant powder she discovers in the bathroom.
>>
>>LH
>>
>  ~~~~~~~~
>Something like this, operating in reverse, happened in product labelling,
>perhaps at the behest of the product safety people, when "inflammable" got
>changed to "flammable" 40 or 50 years ago.  I suppose "inflammable" was
>deemed to be liable to misinterpretation as UNflammable.
>AM
>
Right; an reanalysis that was perhaps inevitable, and not necessarily
innocuous.  Less perniciously (unless perhaps one has a narrow
gullet), there's "unpitted prunes"--are those prunes that have pits,
or that used to have them and no longer do?  I've occasionally seen
packages labelled "Prunes No Pits" to avoid mistakes.

LH

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