Early appearances of "irregardless"

[Wilson Gray]

"Apoplexied" would have apoplexied a previous generation of purists.

-Wilson

On 5/5/07, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Early appearances of "irregardless"
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>
> Vendors of word processing packages (I have no idea which one started the trend) have out of necessity coined a few "un" words.
>
> "undelete" which would have apoplexied a previous generation of purists but which has the specific meaning of "restore text that was removed by a previous DELETE instruction".  I suppose "restore" is a synonym but lacks the highly specific usage of "undelete".
>
> "undo" is another common one in this series.  Others tend to be ad-hoc, such as "unbold".  Even the clumsy "ununderline" is possible here.
>
> Also don't overlook "1984" in which the "Newspeak" language decided that, uh, political correctness required the existence of exact antonyms.  "Bad" is not an exact antonym for "good" so Newspeak coined the word "ungood" (along with "plusungood" and "doubleplusungood").
>
> Aside to Doug Harris: you wrote
> "...And in such Adirondacks villages as Old Forge it's quite common to see, around dusk, deerdestrians -- right in the middle of the village's main street -- in numbers that are endearing to tourists but pains in the derrière to residents."
>
> I can't believe you passed up the opportunity to say "pains in the deeriere".
>
> old joke:  "Rump Parliament, or the London Derrière"
>
>      - Jim Landau
>
>
> ...And in such Adirondacks villages as Old Forge it's quite common to see, around dusk, deerdestrians -- right in the middle of the village's main street -- in numbers that are endearing to tourists but pains in the derrière to residents.
>
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