If your composition for English class was marked down for using “it’s” as a possessive, you could argue that Shakespeare and Austen used it that way, irregardless of what Mrs. Grundy told you.  Did I write “irregardless”?  Of course it is a word, because English speakers use it, but more commonly they speak it.  Kory Stamper, formerly an editor at Merriam-Webster, points out that “irregardless” is something of an intensifier.  This, and the tale other remarkable stories of words and dictionaries is told by Stamper in Word by Word, the Secret Life of Dictionaries (2017, Pantheon). 

Mrs. Grundy, as the Merriam-Webster points out is a prudish scold (and a good example of an eponym, she being an inordinately proper character in a 1798 play).  Her attitude about language would be prescriptive, but Kory Stamper is decidedly on the side of descriptive dictionaries.  Words mean whatever a speakers of the language understand them to mean.  Of course, there are levels of usage, or what sociolinguists call register. Stamper and the Merriam-Webster acknowledge that “irregardless” is not for use is formal discourse.  But word it is, and Stamper apparently would never correct you for using it.

She does not spare the scolds who believe in pointing out to us who might not know that “decimate” really means to destroy a tenth when, in fact, it usually doesn’t.  This is etymological fallacy.  The “falacists” may know that the word originally was used to describe a cruel punishment in the Roman military (a technique practiced by modern day tyrants as well).  Since it has come to mean “to destroy” then what it means is what people take it to mean.  Simple as that.  I might add the word “defenestration” which most of time is used to mean the removal of persons from an organization, a house cleaning.  The original house cleaning was tossing a couple of priests out the window in 1618 (they survived). Yes the word stems from fenestra (L.) or “window” but who really uses it that way?  And who even uses it?

For those who show their supposed erudition by telling us that “posh” means port-out-starboard-home, well, I can only say:  please stop.  It is not etymological fallacy, it is just a falsehood.  The same applies to the folk etymology for “mind your P’s and Q’s.  No pub tender (who is actually called a “publican”) has ever asked his intoxicated guests to tally up their own bills. For the truth of these false etymologies, you’ll have to look it up because if I get started I will turn into a grammar scold myself.

Kory Stamper spent years in dealing with lexophiles who complain about the dictionary’s sins of omission or commission. Her stories of these (and they must be legion) are worth triple the price of the book.  My own complaint is that “lexophile” ain’t in the dictionary, at least not in the M-W online version.  It suggests “logophile.”  But people use lexophile (and also lexophilia) so I insist it is a word, and also it is I. Or I could say it is me, because that too is commonly used as well as understood although Sister Theresa Mary scolded me for it.  Word by Word, the Secret Life of Dictionaries, Kory Stamper, 2017, Pantheon Books).