Friday, September 26, 2008

You Sound Like A Damn Fool When You Say It Wrong

You will hear a lot over the next day (or two if the Mets should win again) about the team's resiliency. Only problem is, resiliency isn't really correct. You'll see it in most dictionaries, but the more correct term is "resilience."
Other words you often hear that don't exist are "laxadaisical" and "irregardless."
The correct words are "lackadaisical" and "regardless" or perhaps "irrespective."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Irregardless is actually in the dictionary. i didnt think it was either, but i made a bet with May-May because she said it and we looked it up and i lost

Oh yeah, like the BTTF reference, you should think of running for class president

Paul said...

Sadly dictionaries have been dumbed down to the point where they are no longer trustworthy arbiters of grammatical correctness.
Dictionaries have been expanded to include "accepted" word forms, which basically means if a word is used incorrectly long enough by enough people, the dictionary will fold to the will of the unwashed masses.
You tell May-May that "irregardless" is branded with the same scarlet letter as "ain't."
The dictionary definitions of both words come with the epithet "non-standard."

Anonymous said...

I love it when you use Back to the Future and Teen Wolf references.