# "I could care less" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 27, 2014, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622 "2014-08-27T11:49:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Crotalus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crotalus/32/41_2.png) [@Crotalus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crotalus)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/21 "2014-08-27T15:43:24Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Exactly. It’s just like any number of other idiomatic phrases that have evolved into forms that no longer make literal sense. **Andy L** and **Exapno** - I could disagree more, but not much more. 🙂 These idioms aren’t like “a coon’s age” or “a month of Sundays”. The original and still more common version says in plain English but in slightly different words what it means: I don’t care. The newer and less common version actually seems to mean the opposite of that, while it seems to be intended to mean the same thing. Because the two phrases co-exist, the “couldn’t” version seems clearly to be preferable. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/22 "2014-08-27T15:46:19Z")
One wonders if the Dalai Lama could care less about world peace. My first inclination is to say, “probably not.” He just seems to be wired that way. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/23 "2014-08-27T17:03:09Z")
> [@Crotalus](#): > > **Andy L** and **Exapno** - I could disagree more, but not much more. 🙂 > > These idioms aren’t like “a coon’s age” or “a month of Sundays”. The original and still more common version says in plain English but in slightly different words what it means: I don’t care. The newer and less common version actually seems to mean the opposite of that, while it seems to be intended to mean the same thing. Because the two phrases co-exist, the “couldn’t” version seems clearly to be preferable. This isn’t a matter of opinion. The recorded actual usage by actual people is a fact and the only thing that counts is facts. I’ve given an explanation of why it’s a fact. You’re free not to use the idiom. I’ve defended many usages I don’t personally use. That I don’t like them doesn’t make their use by others wrong; it’s just a matter of personal style. Criticizing an idiom makes as much sense as criticizing someone else’s dialect. BYW, people can and do change the pronunciation of words depending on setting and context and people can and do use both “I could care less” and “I couldn’t care less” depending on setting and context. One is only preferable in context at the user’s discretion. Which makes it exactly like every other single word and phrase in the language. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/24 "2014-08-27T17:34:32Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Sarcasm uses tone of voice to reverse the meaning of the literal words. In the extreme case it becomes a joke unto itself, like the example of a double negative meaning a positive being “yeah, right.” > > Clearly the original was “I couldn’t care less.” At some point people started using it sarcastically and saying the equivalent of “yeah, right, I could care less,” with every clause being a sarcastic “who cares?” Do you have any evidence for this claim—i.e. that the first people to use the phrase “I could care less” did so out of sarcasm rather than out of ignorance and carelessness? ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/25 "2014-08-27T17:41:50Z")
> [@Crotalus](#): > > **Andy L** and **Exapno** - I could disagree more, but not much more. 🙂 > > These idioms aren’t like “a coon’s age” or “a month of Sundays”. The original and still more common version says in plain English but in slightly different words what it means: I don’t care. The newer and less common version actually seems to mean the opposite of that, while it seems to be intended to mean the same thing. Because the two phrases co-exist, the “couldn’t” version seems clearly to be preferable. I prefer “couldn’t” myself, but then I prefer “eat your cake and have it, too” rather than the more confusing “have your cake and eat it, too” - but for whatever reason, the latter has taken over from the former, and a native speaker of English knows what it means (see ngram here: [Google Ngram Viewer: your cake and eat it,your cake and have it](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=your+cake+and+eat+it%2Cyour+cake+and+have+it&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=18&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cyour%20cake%20and%20eat%20it%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cyour%20cake%20and%20have%20it%3B%2Cc0) ). ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/26 "2014-08-27T17:44:58Z")
Why do people assume that this is an ignorant usage? It is development of an earlier phrase, with layers of subtlety that do not exist in that phrase; even though it is rarely used in the UK, I respect it as an idiom and do not assume it is inferior in any way. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/27 "2014-08-27T17:49:29Z")
> [@yearofglad](#): > > The “and so on” includes things like: > > I could care less _because I care very deeply_. > I could care less _because I’m caring with 100% of my soul_. > I could care less _or more because I’m right on the fence_. > > The fact that “I could care less” covers every possible amount of caring _except_ the situation in which the speaker doesn’t care at all, which is what they’re trying to convey, makes “I could care less” absolutely meaningless. > > Folks that insist “I could care less” is some witty, sarcastic saying are merely covering their asses. This argument could also apply to ‘Tell me about it’ and ‘I should be so lucky’, both of which are sarcastic expressions of the opposite sense to the phrase concerned. ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/28 "2014-08-27T18:10:15Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > Why do people assume that this is an ignorant usage? Because plainly, on it’s face, it is an ignorant usage. It literally says the opposite of the meaning it is trying to convey. Furthermore, the original is a double negative type of sentence that trips up a lot of people, so it is easy to imagine that some people started using it wrong, especially given the low level of attention most people give to the literal meanings of idioms. One could _argue_ that it came about in a different way, but the simplest interpretation of the data is “people dun goofed”. > [@](#): > > It is development of an earlier phrase, with layers of subtlety that do not exist in that phrase; This alternative hypothesis, that some group of people _intentionally_ changed the phrasing to add some additional layer of subtlety or whatever is possible, but I personally find the “people started saying it wrong out of carelessness, and then later made up the ‘layers of subtlety’ interpretation to avoid seeming foolish when this was pointed out to them” hypothesis to be much more parsimonious with what we already know about human nature. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/29 "2014-08-27T18:22:07Z")
> [@leahcim](#): > > Because plainly, on it’s face, it is an ignorant usage. It literally says the opposite of the meaning it is trying to convey. Then “head over heels” is an ignorant usage but that’s irrelevant. The data also clearly shows that “I could care less” is considered semantically equivalent to “I couldn’t care less” by the english-speaking public, regardless of how pedantically one tries to parse the clause. Linguistically, the matter is settled. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/30 "2014-08-27T18:27:37Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Do you have any evidence for this claim—i.e. that the first people to use the phrase “I could care less” did so out of sarcasm rather than out of ignorance and carelessness? The evidence is indirect, pulled from similar phrases and terms that have reversed literal meaning like those eburacum45 mentioned. Look at this [World Wide Words](http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ico1.htm) article from 2001 on the idiom, which may be where he got his examples from. > [@](#): > > Why it lost its negative has been much discussed. It’s clear that the process is different from the shift in meaning that took place with cheap at half the price. In that case, the inversion was due to a mistaken interpretation of its meaning, as has happened, for example, with beg the question. > > In these cases people have tried to apply logic, and it has failed them. Attempts to be logical about I could care less also fail. Taken literally, if one could care less, then one must care at least a little, which is obviously the opposite of what is meant. It is so clearly logical nonsense that to condemn it for being so (as some commentators have done) misses the point. The intent is obviously sarcastic — the speaker is really saying, “As if there was something in the world that I care less about”. > > However, this doesn’t explain how it came about in the first place. Something caused the negative to vanish even while the original form of the expression was still very much in vogue and available for comparison. Stephen Pinker, in The Language Instinct, points out that the pattern of intonation in the two versions is very different. > > There’s a close link between the stress pattern of I could care less and the kind that appears in certain sarcastic or self-deprecatory phrases that are associated with the Yiddish heritage and (especially) New York Jewish speech. Perhaps the best known is I should be so lucky!, in which the real sense is often “I have no hope of being so lucky”, a closely similar stress pattern with the same sarcastic inversion of meaning. There’s no evidence to suggest that I could care less came directly from Yiddish, but the similarity is suggestive. There are other American expressions that have a similar sarcastic inversion of apparent sense, such as Tell me about it!, which usually means “Don’t tell me about it, because I know all about it already”. These may come from similar sources. Here’s an article from [Slate](http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/03/18/why_i_could_care_less_is_not_as_irrational_or_ungrammatical_as_you_might.html) that makes all the same points. So does [Ben Zimmer](https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/do-we-care-less-about-could-care-less/) when he replaced William Safire’s language column at the Times. This is so well known, and so often discussed, that it’s irritating to have to bring it up anew each and every time. It’s like the ridiculously snobbery about the use of hopefully, when that parallels dozens of other terms in the language. If you’re going to dump on certain words or phrases, at least take the time to find out if you’re missing a million similar evolutions of language so you don’t look quite as foolish when you get on your high horse. ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/31 "2014-08-27T18:44:29Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > Then “head over heels” is an ignorant usage but that’s irrelevant. It certainly is, but when people look at “head over heels”, they say “oh well, it’s just weird, but idioms don’t have to make sense”. When people loot at, “I could care less”, instead of just saying that a goodly fraction seem to say, “oh no, it actually _does_ make sense if you apply a number of contortions to its plain meaning/assume the speaker is being sarcastic/look for ‘shades of meaning’/&c”. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/32 "2014-08-27T18:46:42Z")
They wouldn’t if another group of people would shut the fuck up about “hurr durr, you actually mean you do care!” ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/33 "2014-08-27T18:47:11Z")
Pinker says; > [@](#): > > Listen to how the two versions are pronounced;… The melodies and stresses are completely different, and with good reason. The second version is not illogical, it’s _sarcastic_. The point of sarcasm is that by making an assertion that is deliberately false or accompanied by ostentatiously mannered intonation, one deliberately implies its opposite. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/34 "2014-08-27T18:48:40Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Look at this [World Wide Words](http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ico1.htm) article from 2001 on the idiom, which may be where he got his examples from. Thanks for the link (which also includes the note that “The form I could care less has provoked a vast amount of comment and criticism in the past thirty years or so. Few people have had a kind word for it, and many have been vehemently opposed to it”; so that those of us who are bothered by it at least have company.) I find the argument you quoted somewhat, but not completely, persuasive. My gut feeling—which I fully admit could be wrong—is along the lines of **leahcim** ’s. To me it sounds more like malapropism than deliberate sarcasm. (In this judgment I may applying a variation of [Hanlon’s Razor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor).) ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/35 "2014-08-27T18:49:58Z")
Truthfully, I don’t find Pinker’s argument all that convincing. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/36 "2014-08-27T18:56:17Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > Truthfully, I don’t find Pinker’s argument all that convincing. Me neither, and I’m a big fan of his. I don’t hear different stresses or melodies when people say “I could care less” vs. “I couldn’t care less”. The people I hear say it basically the same. ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/37 "2014-08-27T19:12:08Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > Me neither, and I’m a big fan of his. I don’t hear different stresses or melodies when people say “I could care less” vs. “I couldn’t care less”. The people I hear say it basically the same. Furthermore, this is how you say, “I don’t care” using a sarcastic tone of voice: > [@](#): > > I TOTALLY care about this A LOT!! Phrases that are meant ab initio to be sarcastic are overtly sarcastic. This subtle sarcasm we are supposed to read into “I could care less” seems inconsistent with how sarcasm is normally used. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/38 "2014-08-27T19:25:18Z")
I like and use both. “I could care less” has the advantage of being a malapropism, sarcastic and ironic all at the same time. “I could care less, but that would require a change in my level of effort.” A lot of the usage is by people who are repeating what they’ve thought they heard someone else say to diminish something, but they aren’t really thinking. It’s all in the tone. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_the\_Immortal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/39 "2014-08-27T19:35:39Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > The data also clearly shows that “I could care less” is considered semantically equivalent to “I couldn’t care less” by the english-speaking public, regardless of how pedantically one tries to parse the clause. Linguistically, the matter is settled. They may be semantically equivalent, but “I could care less” has a “this is how stupid people talk” vibe to it. It’s a lot like how “Where’s the washroom?” and “Where’s the shitter?” are semantically equivalent, but the latter option makes the speaker seem uncouth. ---
**Author:** ![Paintcharge](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/paintcharge/32/7946_2.png) [@Paintcharge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paintcharge)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2014, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622/40 "2014-08-27T19:59:35Z")
It’s much the same as arguing about the modern usage of “literally”, or “try and do x” vs “try to do x.” There is the correct linguistic way to look at it, and then there is the way people talk and are understood. Personally, I hate “tray and”, but “literally” used as an intensifier doesn’t bug me at all. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-could-care-less/696622.md?page=3)