irregardless, AND MISFEASANCE?!?!?

[Mark Mandel]

And there is also nonfeasance.
>From the respective entries in
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/:

misfeasance: A term used in Tort Law to describe an act that is legal but
performed improperly.
malfeasance: The commission of an act that is unequivocally illegal or
completely wrongful.
nonfeasance: The intentional failure to perform a required duty or
obligation.

m a m

On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 12:03 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> At 7/30/2010 11:45 AM, David Barnhart wrote:
> >I heard "misfeasants" this morning on NPR of all places.
>
> There is of course misfeasance (and malfeasance), and this form seems
> natural and more pleasing than the also-absent misfeaser.  (Or was it
> an adjective on NPR?)  And where else on the radio would one expect
> to hear such a word?  (There are a few hits on Google -- including
> one from the Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary ... which says it is
> not a word.)
>
> Was someone thinking of the difference between misconduct and
> malconduct?  That pair of oppositely-gendered advice columnists.
>
> If the context was the recently-expelled Russian spies, I could
> imagine such a distinction, whether -feasance or -conduct -- since
> they may have been doing nothing illegal, merely gathering and
> passing on information available to the public.
>
> Joel
>
>
> >DKB
> >
> > >Larry Horn wrote:
> >
> > >Those benighted ignorami Ruskin and
> > >London--didn't they realize there's no such word
> > >as "unregardless"?  It's not in the dictionary!
> > >What they meant, of course, was "irregardless"!
> >
> > >LH
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------
> >The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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