I could care fewer. 
You couldn’t care fewer
Here’s one that almost always used “incorrectly,” but will rarely elicit a public upbraiding, and that’s the [original] use of words like “hopefully” or “thankfully.” Probably others.
A pedantic “correct use” would be something like “We looked hopefully to the future.” Instead, it (and the others) will almost always be used idiomatically in the sense of “I (or we) hope that. . . .” as in “Hopefully, the package will arrive today.”
So. . . if you’re one of the types referenced in the OP, here’s some more finger-wagging ammo for ya. I did a search on the use of “hopefully” just since yesterday. I *only went thru the first several, but every single one was used incorrectly in its literal sense.
*Oh, heavens, a “misplaced only.”
Yep.
That was a deliberately double-barreled attack on pedantic convention.
FTR I’m firmly in the camp of " ‘couldn’t’ is correct and ‘could’ is ignorance probably originating in mishearing and dialects that specialize in laziness & sloppiness".
I know that position is more wrong than right but I cling to it like a shipwrecked sailor embraces his meagre driftwood upon the vastness of the wild sea of modern English.
Great comeback though. Well played, Good Sir / Madam!
Just be sure you’re clinging to jetsam. You can get in trouble for clinging to somebody else’s flotsam.
Surprisingly (to me, even) ‘I could care less’ never pinged my grammar Nazi radar. I always took it as either an ironic usage (like saying ‘yeah, I love that idea’ when I really hate it) or a shortened version of ‘as if I could care less’.
Same. I’ve always taken it to be sarcastic.
But the thing is, I’ve never heard that in the intonation. In the original “I couldn’t care less,” I’ve always heard the emphasis on “couldn’t.” In the shorter “I could care less” I would expect a sarcastic rendering also with emphasis on “could,” but I don’t think I’ve ever heard that. Maybe some do, but I can’t say I’ve heard that. (Yeah, I know, someone’s always heard it that way, and only that way.) The pattern seems to be the same as “I don’t care,” just longer, with the same emphasis on “I” and then descending in tone. Not going to debate the point, but I don’t buy the sarcastic sense because I don’t hear it that way in real life.
But “could care less” actually entered the lexicon with the negative sense moved from the auxiliary verb to the subject. The early press accounts from the late 1940s would say something like "and nobody could care less than [whoever]. From there it evolved from “nobody” to “I” or “we” by the mid 1950s. So the explicit negative connotation had been lost, but the negative sense remained.
Not only can they glide, jet airliners can glide exceptionally well, with approximately 25% of the glide ratio of a purpose-built dedicated glider. The Gimli glider (already mentioned previously) was a Boeing 767 that glided around 145 miles to a safe emergency landing on no engine power at all after running out of fuel. The glide capability of modern jetliners is due to efficient aerodynamics compared to older, slower planes.
Biplanes are actually the worst of the lot due to terrible aerodynamics, caused in part by the drag of all the struts and wires and inefficient wing design. The glide ratio of something like a Sopwith Camel is about one-third of the glide ratio of a modern jetliner. Of course the modern jetliner has to maintain much higher airspeed in order to stay aloft, but it’s also covering much greater distances as it loses altitude.
And now that “I could care less” has taken over, “I couldn’t care less” comes off as weirdly earnest and insistent - as if you’re putting your foot down and declaring that, by golly, you do! not! care! Which feels completely at odds with, y’know, not caring.
My problem with “could care less” is very simple: it doesn’t mean anything! Sure, most of us understand the intended meaning because of the tone in which it’s uttered, but the words don’t make sense. Is there something that you care less about? What exactly are you trying to say?
I get that the tone conveys the message, but this is how apes communicate. I’d like to think that humans are better than that. I’d like to think that humans delve a little deeper into language and actually comprehend the meanings of words, not just ape-like grunts.
Ummm, acktually…
Point taken, but I’d like to believe that humans are a subspecies of ape that exist on a somewhat higher plane, characterized in part by a comprehension of spoken and written language.
But such is the nature of idioms. They don’t mean what they say, and they’re hardly peculiar to English. I doubt that any English speaker’s personal lexicon is 100% literal. I think even the negative interrogative isn’t literal.
Jack did not go to the store.
“Jack, did you go to the store?” “No.”
“Jack, didn’t you go to the store?” “No.”
Asked that way, there’s an assumption on the part of the speaker the he/she thinks Jack did. It’s asked in a negative way, but it’s still the same answer.
I was really just joking in the spirit of the thread.
I have a similar problem with “head over heels”. I’m so overwhelmed with emotion that… I’m standing and walking upright as one normally does? Surely, the remarkable state should be for a person to be heels over head.
That’s what makes “could care less” annoying. There isn’t an expression “heels over head” so even though the idiom “head over heels” is technically wrong it doesn’t grate like those who took a perfectly good phrase, misheard it and turned it into nonsense.
And to be ass-forwards.
I always hear that as ‘revolving around in a somersaulting fashion so one doesn’t know which way is up’; as if it were a shortened version of ‘heels over head over heels over head over heels over head . . .’
Granted, that isn’t what the phrase actually says; and I don’t think I’ve ever heard or seen that longer form.
Good points.