User:Connor Behan/sandbox

Misconception: Words that convey a misunderstanding of English vocabulary are not real words. All words in English originated by becoming commonly used during a certain time period. There are several informal words regarded as "bastardizations" of more formal parts of speech but the idea that they are somehow not words is a misconception. Conversate, expresso , funnest , impactful , irregardless   , mentee and thusly are examples of such disliked words that contain errors. Conversate , expresso       , funnest    , impactful   , irregardless           , mentee       and thusly         also appear in many dictionaries because English is not a prescriptive language. The most prominent example is irregardless. Entire articles have been written about it  and it is dismissed as "not a word" in some style guides. Grammarians hold the view that "You shouldn't use it if you want to be taken seriously, but it has gained wide enough use to qualify as a word." To truly reject "irregardless", one would have to take the controversial step of introducing further criteria on what constitutes a word. As summarized by John McIntyre, "we have English because multiple generations of illiterate peasants demolished Anglo-Saxon grammar wholesale."