We must confess that of the charges leveled against irregardless, the one asserting that it is not actually a word puzzles us most. If irregardless is not a word, then what is it, and why is it exciting so many people who care about words? Of course it is a word. You may, if you like, refer to it as a bad word, a silly word, a word you don't like, or by any one of a number of other descriptors, but to deny that a specific collection of letters used by many people for hundreds of years to mean a definite thing is a word is to deny the obvious.