Every spell checker I have, both ones that automatically spell check and those run after finishing a document or draft, seems to consider the word unironically to be incorrect. I have heard the word used in conversation plenty, and have seen it written or typed on at least several occasions that I recall immediately. Also, it feels natural to use it in a sentence, and its meaning appears relatively obvious at least as far as I'm concerned.
I looked it up online to find out that: at the very least, Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster consider it to be a valid word. I've also discovered that my spell checkers are bothered by the word unironic, but not of course by the word ironic. I feel fairly confident that unironic must be a word… However, it's also completely possible I'm simply mistaken.
So, what's the verdict English Language Stack Exchange Community? Is it a word that is just being incorrectly flagged, or is it commonly used but not technically valid?
Best Answer
Here is an Ngram chart of usage frequency for unironically for the period 1900–2019:
As the chart indicates, the word has been in detectable use for more than 100 years and has grown significantly more common during the period since the year 2000 than it was before that.
A Google Books search for unironically finds a small swarm of early occurrences in the period 1921–1923. From Arnold Bennett, "Mr. Prohack," in The Delineator (November 1921):
From Edmund Blunden, The Bonadventure: A Random Journal of an Atlantic Holiday (1923):
And from Richard Curle, Into the East: Notes on Burma and Malaya (1923):
The sense of the term is in each case, simply, "not ironically"—that is, without any awareness of or intention to express a contrast or incongruousness between a thing said and the thing or situation about which it was said.
Bennett and Blunden were Englishmen and Curle was a Scot, so it may be that the word first came into literary use in Great Britain. Be that as it may, the rise of unironically did not begin in earnest until the mid-1970s, after which it seems to have made considerable progress into mainstream written usage.
Even so, it bears noticing that a Google Ngram chart mapping the frequency of unironically (blue line) against the frequency of ironically (red line) for the period 1900–2019 suggests that the latter has made far more progress in frequency of usage over the past half-century than the former has:
In any event, unironically is certainly a word in good standing (outside the precincts of Microsoft Word, anyway), with a clear meaning and consistent usage over many decades to support it. Who (besides Microsoft) could ask for anything more?