This is meant to be more of an informative post, rather than a complaint (although I will complain because it is warranted). For those of you who fall victim to its grasp, consider this a friendly, informative post (or reminder) because I myself, yes I, was once in the same place as you and freeing myself has made my life exponentially better (OK, that was a bit overdramatic).
I, of course, am talking about the phrase "I could care less". Without exception, whenever someone says this phrase they actually mean "I couldn't care less" (you know, the exact opposite). I don't know who started the trend of dropping the "n't", but the phrase makes very little sense without it. If you haven't figured out why by this point, let me explain: when someone says they "could care less", they mean "I don't care at all". However, if they can care less, they have some amount of care (because there is some amount that can be subtracted from there care (could care less)). When people say the opposite of what they mean (and aren't being sarcastic), words start to have no meaning. This is why pancake unequivocal box fetter yesterday leader.
Alright, now it's time to complain: over the last week or two, I've heard this phrase several (hundred) times. The solution is not always as easy as informing the speaker of their mistake. Remember those podcasts I told you about two weeks ago when I complained about Tim Tebow (the headline)? You remember that I listen to three sports podcasts a day? The people on these podcasts are theoretically professional radio personalities. They most likely have a degree in Communications. These are the people that should have a better grasp on the English language than me. However, they seem to have some sort of infatuation with the phrase. I find this egregious.
So, yes, I could care less if you read this post and comment...because I do care (even if it's just a bit).
My world was rocked when I realized that, for my entire life, I had been saying the opposite of what I meant when I said "I could care less." This occurred at the age of 20. It seems people long past 20 still have not realized their error.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of when I had a problem kind of like this. You know how you may ask a question and say "you don't want me, do you?" Well I would say "you don't want me, don't you?" it made since because I thought you were just repeating what you said earlier, but it's "you don't want me, do you?" because what you are really saying is "you don't want me. or do you actually want me?" I never said I could care less.
ReplyDeleteAs I told you when we spoke recently, I've long pondered the question of how this error entered the vernacular. I am forced to conclude that it started as sarcasm. It's the only semi-plausible explanation. Laziness can't account for the dropping of the n't, because that hasn't happened in any other phrase ever.
ReplyDeleteIf it became popular at some point in the early 80s, say, to sarcastically suggest, "Yeah, I could care less about that than I do right now," I can sort of imagine that over time the sarcasm was replaced by sheer irritation.
[Edit: after typing all that, I looked it up on google. It seems that the correct version appears in the 50s, but by the 60s people were using the wrong one and NO ONE KNOWS WHY.
There's some decent speculation at
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ico1.htm
For an unintelligibly scholarly work, see
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001256.html
And for a bunch of people offering their 2 cents,
http://askville.amazon.com/people-care/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=1615791
But it seems there are definitely people who think laziness caused it.]
Thanks for the info. It certainly does seem like laziness (which would be odd because English speakers are never lazy).
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