After joking in someone else's journal about a character in a short film using "irregardless" and defining it as being "without lack of regard," I decided to look up irregardless and try to figure out why people use it. I am fairly sure I used it as a child, but it is hard to say. I'll be on the lookout. A friend of mine here at the college said he had never even heard it being used, but then again, he lives in Del Mar, so we can understand why. Anyway, lets's get this show on the road. The American Heritage Dictionary spoke thus about irregardless:"Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir– prefix and –less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so."
But this didn't help; how was unravel as redundant as irregardless? As far as I understood, unravel meant to unwind, to undo a knitted thing, to undo something that was ordered and stiched. I don't use the word "ravel," but it seems to be to... well... To not ravel? Now I am beginning to see the problem. Actually, what the heck could "ravel" or "unravel" mean, and why don't we use it? Again, to the dictionary.
The seemingly contradictory senses of this word (ravel and unravel are both synonyms and antonyms) are reconciled by its roots in weaving and sewing: as threads become unwoven, they get tangled.
Are you started to begin to see complex infinite forms, or is it just me? Dizzying, eh? Sometimes I forget the astounding mysteries my dictionary holds in store.
ravel\Rav"el\, v. i.
1. To become untwisted or unwoven; to be disentangled; to be relieved of intricacy.
2. To fall into perplexity and confusion. [Obs.]
Till, by their own perplexities involved, They ravel more, still less resolved. --Milton.
3. To make investigation or search, as by picking out the threads of a woven pattern. [Obs.]
The humor of raveling into all these mystical or entangled matters. --Sir W. Temple.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
So, A Ravelling?
- Music:Kenji Kawaii - Reincarnation III
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Comments
Enjoy!
Life is hard for the nomadic people of the Sahara Desert who live and work along the 450-mile salt road from Timbuktu
SETTING SUN:
Men say evening prayers deep in the Sahara Desert along the salt route. As more and more nomads choose to leave the salt road for more sedentary town life, the sun may be setting on this lifestyle once and for all.
http://www.time.com/time/world/arti
I've always used the word irregardless to mean that something I'm saying is irreverant regardless of the fact that I've acknowledged it's being so. Like, I know this is not appropriate, but I'm going to say it anyway. I think I've also implied an irrelevant factor into it's meaning, which may be my own incorrect connotation I've attached to it.
That's kind of sad that those people may be losing their ancient way of life in the salt mines!! That's the result of progress I know, but still an old tradition has greater meaning than the mere act of participating in it!
This of course makes for interesting fodder for non-linear thinkers like myself and justifies my marking up Kiad's journal so much tonight (although she is a pillar of patience among other things) :)
flummoxed
Where next?
An E-mail I sent to an associate on a development mailing list earlier today:
On Sat, December 06 2003 09:50, Jason Keirstead wrote:
> Language (especially English) is dynamic, constantly growing and changing,
> it's not like Mathematics where you can define it's rules in a book.
(Just for your interest, nothing of contribution value here)
*Some* languages. Icelandic has only slightly changed over the course of
time, such that if you learn Old Norse, you automatically know it except for
pronunciation differences, and a modern-day Icelander can pick up a
1000-year-old saga and read it with ease. Their language, like other
scandinavian languages, form new words by combining simpler smaller words
(i.e. a word for E-mail, tölvupóstur, is formed by combination of tölva
(computer) and póstur (post, mail)). Sometimes though a new short word for
something is needed, so there is a section of the government there which
comes up with these, and they do so by recycling old, dead words (A word
which originally meant a thin skin which you would stretch over a window hole
to block wind but allow light through became the word for computer monitor,
for instance) or by forming new ones as a last resort based upon
similarity to existing similar words in the language (i.e. the word for
computer, tölva, is derived from the word for arithmetic, tölvisi) in such a
manner that the meaning is literally "arithmetic processor".
Because the Normans were just that much of an influence.
I love reading Old English and Old Norse - even wrote a few poems in it a while back - although I am pretty rusty now. I learned it over the period of a Winter Break while learning to read from the Exeter Book and Njal's saga.
Do you read the Sagas etc?
(Yes, I know how to use the alt-key international keyboard modifiers. whoo)
At leaſt, about ligatures and two wordſ I juſt learned. Ðat can't be pedantiſm. Perhapſ inſanity?
Dime store linguistic theory, but, its possible.
-Me
People are strange.