I’m not a student of its origin, but I always assumed “I could care less” was either a kind of sarcasm (picture a Wayne’s world “…not!” added to the end) or a shortened version of something like, “I could care less, but probably not much.” Are you sure this was language drift, something that assumed a meaning that would not have been inferred when the phrase was first used this way?
True dat. But I took from the tone of the overall post that he was taking exception with my playing usage cop, and he wanted in closing to make sure I knew my contribution to this thread was beneath his notice (despite his having actually, um, noticed it).
I adore that movie, honestly, but Troy gave 'Laina only one definition of the most applicable form of irony - verbal irony. (As she was trying to answer the question to a newspaper editor, verbal irony would most likely have been the acceptable definition to the interviewer.) And, of course, ironically, Troy was being terse and uncomfortable, not helpful, while 'Laina was pretending everything was okay with their relationship - the scene itself was ironic. Ironic, huh?
“The Gift of the Magi” does indeed demonstrate Cosmic Irony, sometimes called Irony of Fate in classrooms. It’s a close cousin of Situational Irony, with the added element of paranoia that larger forces are fucking with us for their amusement.
Oh, oh, wait a sec. Doesn’t it also end with the narrator saying
In that use, “foolish children” and “unwisely sacrificed” are ironic as well, since the narrator actually means (and goes on to say) that they are indeed wise. So there’s Verbal Irony as well.
Stratocaster, no I’m not sure it’s language drift, since there’s no codifying body for English. Some people do think it’s a shortened form of “As if I could care less” or “I could care less, but it’s not worth the effort”, some think it’s sarcastic, but lots explain itaslanguagedrift.
I assumed that’s how **Ludovic **was using it 'cause it’s cleverest that way: a post of intentional not-irony in a thread about things assumed to be ironic that aren’t. But I could be overestimating Ludovic’s skill here.
So, you’re saying that words have an independent existence outside of how they’re actually used? That would mean that language is not so much invented as it is discovered. All of these words are just sort of floating around out there, each with a pre-existing and distinct definition, waiting for someone to come along and pluck them out of the ether?
Which raises a disturbing question: what if we’re all not using the right definition? What if “definition” doesn’t actually mean, “what a word means,” but instead means something else entirely, and we’ve all been misusing it all along? Think how embarassing that would be!
Yes, in instances where they are used improperly. Did you not know that?
No. Did you really think I meant that? Really? Words have commonly accepted meanings, meanings that can indeed shift. But at any given moment, a word’s common meaning is, well, what it is. So the short answer to a question that is essentially, “Why can’t a certain word be commonly accepted as meaning something other than what it is commonly accepted to mean?” is, “Because it can’t. By definition.”
Yeah, right. How unclear of me to have implied such a ridiculous notion. And in a post where I was pedantically trying to encourage clear word usage. It’s, it’s…what’s that word I’m trying to think of?
I don’t know. I’m inferring you think it’s most, and if that’s the case, perhaps we do have an expanded definition. But that’s not my (perhaps uninformed) impression. Frankly, prior to Alanis’s song (and since, for that matter) I don’t recall many people using irony in such a manner. “Hey, Bob, last week it rained on my wedding day. And then on Tuesday at work, when I was looking for a knife in the pantry, there were nothing but spoons for coffee in the drawer. Pretty ironic, eh?” Maybe I give the common man too much credit, but it seems to me most people would be confused by the usage here. “What’s ironic about that?” Beyond that, irony is a complex concept, with several nuances, as has been pointed out. From my perspective, it’s a word, like countless others, that lots of people don’t fully understand.
In my experience, most people don’t use the word at all, actually. But I will stand corrected if the usage has shifted and the language gods have nodded toward this change.
Now I have this weird desire to rewrite the song so that the situations described are indeed ironic.
“It’s like raaaaaaaain on a weatherman’s wedding cake”
“It’s like good advise that you get right after the decision is irrevocable and going wrong, from the very person you would have least expected to have given it, but they were there all the time, but now it’s too late, and the reason you didn’t ask them is because you thought they would be biased the other way anyway. And then it turns out to have been the right decision for the wrong reasons, but it took years for you to appreciate this, and the Gods themselves laughed at your petty mortal foolishness.”