Quote:
Originally Posted by August
I could care less what the British do...
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Utterly off topic:
Why do so many Americans say "I could care less"?
Surely the phrase is "I couldn't care less"? as, if you could care less, you
therefore care to some extent more than the minimum, whilst if you
couldn't
care less then you are already having the minimum amount of care possible.
Anyone with me on this?
ed: Google says someone is with me on this and they drew a graph:
Quote:
The idiom "couldn't care less", meaning "doesn't care at all"
(the meaning in full is "cares so little that he couldn't possibly
care less"), originated in Britain around 1940. "Could care less",
which is used with the same meaning, developed in the U.S. around
1960. We get disputes about whether the latter was originally a
mis-hearing of the former; whether it was originally ironic; or
whether it arose from uses where the negative element was separated
from "could" ("None of these writers could care less..."). Henry
Churchyard believes that this sentence by Jane Austen may be
pertinent: "You know nothing and you care less, as people say."
(Mansfield Park (1815), Chapter 29) Meaning-saving elaborations
have also been suggested: "As if I could care less!"; "I could care
less, but I'd have to try"; "If I cared even one iota -- which I
don't --, then I could care less."
Recently encountered has been "could give a damn", used in the
sense "couldn't give a damn".
An earlier transition in which "not" was dropped was the one that
gave us "but" in the sense of "only". "I will not say but one
word", where "but" meant "(anything) except", became "I will say but
one word."
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