The House of Grammar Part 5: Revenge of the House of Grammar

Today I'm going to discuss something very close to my heart, something with which I have struggled for many years. It's not easy, as a person who is detail oriented and precise, to relinquish a deeply held conviction. It's even more difficult when you know that what you are giving in to is wrong, in the moral sense, even though you can no longer accept your own assertions as technically correct.
I am talking of course about the worst of things, the bane of my existence, the bastard child of two unassuming and well meaning words that nonetheless birthed a monstrosity.
I'm talking about the Word That Shouldn't Be. This is its story:

Irrespective was the child of In, which meant "not" or "the opposite of" and Respective which meant "without taking account of (something)". Born in the 1600s, he was a careful and helpful word, and despite changes in the English language found work in the mid 1800s as an adverbial consultant. He was useful, often to a fault, lending a hand wherever he might be needed, and some might argue, perhaps too freely.
Regardless was a thrill seeker, a heart breaker, an orphan word born in the late 1500s who named herself for the lack of regard her parent words showed by abandoning her to the wilds of English speech. She held that indifference up like a shield against the world, ready to show everyone how little she really cared. As much as she might try, however, all her efforts were a vain attempt to mask the insecurity and hunger for love that she carried inside her, a need that would prove her undoing.
One day, circumstances thrust Irrespective and Regardless together, and the chemistry between them was electric. Irrespective's driving need to help drew him like a flame to Regardless's inner vulnerability, and as much as she might fight it, something inside her craved the attention. They met, they loved, they fought, and their fights were legendary. But something always drew them back together, and when it did their affair was a violent, sordid, passionate thing, a thing born of shame and need and guilt.
From that affair came a child, but neither word could have been prepared for the Cthulonic horror they had unleashed upon the world. Fleshed in ignorance, with the blind eyes of poor diction, its limbs were the thousand thousand grasping tongues of the lazy. It slithered from the womb in gore and terror and then vanished into the night, leaving both parents wounded, bewildered, and with hope that it would never survive to see the light of another day.
And yet it does.
It hides in foetid caves, blind eyes staring at the darkness, waiting to be summoned forth by dark ritual. All that is necessary is to think its name, and this abomination, this foul misbegotten fiend will lift its head to the sky and let out a silent scream, and your lips will peel back and your tongue will loosen and you will find the creature slithering out, and you will hear your own mouth breathe it free:
"Irregardless." You will say.
And the monster will simply smile.

Irregardless: It's a word. I hate the fact. For years the mere utterance of this word would send me into paroxysms of fury the likes of which drove Anakin Skywalker to kill dozens of sand people (including WOMEN AND CHILDREN, a fact conveniently ignored by Padme, even though she was a champion of multispecies rights and should have gotten the GODDAMNED HINT... but I digress). I actually spent time and energy trying to will myself to perceive a world in which the word irregardless did not exist in a vain attempt to get quantum physics on my side to create a new, alternate reality where it did not, in fact, exist. Quantum physics was no help. Irregardless is, regardless, a word.

It's an abomination of a word, as true an abomination as the Elephant Man or Pauly Shore. It's a tentacled, foul, slithering, flatulent, gibbering synathroesmus (look it up) of a word, but it's a word. Every once in a while some well meaning but badly educated or informed individual will set it free in speech to hang out with other words, and they're nice enough about it, the same way you're nice to the smelly homeless person who happens to be drinking a coffee one booth down from you in the cafe, because you really just don't want them to flip out and kill you with their hobo knife. But after very little time irregardless will slink back into the shadows and retreat to its feculent abode until summoned once again.

 Am I saying what you think I'm saying? Am I admitting something I never thought I would admit? Yes. It was not easy, nor fun, but I've been reading a lot about the evolution of the English language, a couple of books in particular (The Prodigal Tongue by Mark Abley which talks about how English might change and Bill Bryon's The Mother Tongue which talks about how it has changed) and I've come to the conclusion that in order for English to continue to be relevant, new words must be created. And unless we allow that to happen, or at least admit that it is happening, we are condemning our language to a slow decline into obscurity.
And that's something I won't let happen. Let it be a word. Let it evolve, and change, and maybe some day this abomination will suddenly shed its coating of filth and stand as a shining example of etymological perfection. It's doubtful, but I'm willing to give it the chance.
I'm not saying I'm going to use it, mind you. That's crazy talk.
Of course, things change.