'It’s cheap at half the price!"
Does the pope shit in the woods?
Often, someone for whom English is not their first language will use “obviously” or “of course” just as an emphatic. They’re translating from something that’s just a strong “yes” in their language. They have no idea that, in English, the subtext of “obviously” and “of course” is “you’re an idiot for not knowing that.” They don’t mean to be rude, but it sure sounds like it.
In the UK I’ve only ever heard it used as to mean ‘large and very strong’, similar to ‘built like a tank’. I was very confused when I first came across the other usage.
I’ve always interpretef “brick shithouse” to mean its over-built. So, when applied to a woman , it means buxom
(Here’s a bit of context, for those of you whose only experience is with modern bathrooms: an outdoors shithouse was always temporry and built of wood and light weight materials. Because when the pit below it filled up , you would dig a new pit, and move the whole structure, dragging it to the new location. A brick structure would have been WAY too over-built. You know, like Pamela Anderson. )
I’m sticking with John Lawler’s “negation by association” theory:
Like could care less, give a damn is a Negative Polarity Item, that is, a phrase that is ordinarily used only within the scope of semantic negation of some kind (not, never, only, rarely, few, etc.). Hence the perceived strangeness of They could give a damn, which has no overt negative, but means the same thing as the same phrase with a negative. I.e, the business manager was saying that his members couldn’t give a damn.
Give a damn is a member of the open Minimal Direct Object class of NPI’s, like lift a finger, drink a drop, do a thing, eat a bite, etc. The implication of all of them is that, if one can’t even Verb a Minimal Direct Object, why, then, one couldn’t Verb any Direct Object at all. Thus it’s an idiomatic intensification of a negative. But it does usually require a negative to intensify.
However, there apparently is such a thing as negation by association. Like what happened to French pas from ne…pas, which is now usable as a negative in its own right, from long association in the discontinuous morpheme with the overt negative ne, give a damn and could care less have, in American usage at least, come to have their own quasi-independent negative force.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/\~myl/languagelog/archives/001202.html
I continue to be troubled by the expression “to coin a phrase.” Somehow people take it to mean “to originate” but to my mind it more strongly implies “to make yet another copy of.”
Not really. It’s a single word like “cleave”, which can mean to join together or split apart, depending on the context.
Eh, I could give a damn.
Ha, just kidding-- I couldn’t resist the obvious joke. I actually found the “negation by association” theory info in your snippet very interesting, if a bit incomprehensible to me. I wanted to read more, but unfortunately your link is broken. The ‘Language Log’ at the root URL is an interesting and fun throwback to 90s web design, though.
I think using the word ‘literally’ when one really means ‘figuratively’ as an intentionally ironic hyperbolic intensifier is how the usage started, but I believe the ironic meaning is beginning to fall away and newer generations are now using ‘literally’ as an intensifier unironically.
So it is! Take two:
There’s more at the link about oddball uses of “care less,” sans “could” or “couldn’t”:
For many people, I think that “care less” has come to be an emphatic form of care, with a tinge of polarity about it – something like “give a damn”. Google finds plenty of other evidence:
(link) He was not a show cat, but I didn’t care less about it.
(link) Who will win!? Do you care less?!
(link) What on earth was going on, and why should I care less anyway?And in other cases, it seems that care less has just come to mean “not care”, incorporating the negative even without a could around:
(link) Marcus Wilkins a player with ability but a player who cares less and just wants the paycheck..
(link) Michelle lives in an apartment who can barely afford to pay rent, who also lives with a druggie room mate who cares less about her, and her boyfriend abuses Michelle and she’s afraid to break up with him.
(link) The same as my wife (an artist who cares less about motorcars and the like) can start her car and drive around happily, everybody could be able to install Amaya (or any other program) without worrying about the
PC internals.
One of the oldest I can think of is “bad” meaning tough, formidable, skilled. IOW, some form of “good”.
Thanks, looking forward to reading it!
Also the use of ‘cares less’ replacing ‘(could / couldn’t) care less’ is interesting. It’s not a form I think I’ve noticed in actual usage yet. But, thanks to the Baader–Meinhof frequency illusion effect, I’ll probably be hearing it everywhere now 
“Boy, I learned about that one the hard way”
- Woody on “Cheers”
From a Disney short, after Goofy knocks over a Ming vase:
BUTLER: Sir, that vase was priceless!
GOOFY: Oh, good! I’d have felt terrible if it was worth something!
The phrase was coined to indicate an impossible/foolish task. It was first used to describe someone claiming to have invented a perpetual motion machine, and another common cite is a physics textbook that asked “Why can not a man lift himself by pulling up on his bootstraps?”
It changed meaning in the 20th century but the underlying context is still there.
Another example of reversed meaning - Jack of all trades but a master of none This is used to say a generalist is inferior, but it’s a shortened version of the original which implied the opposite - “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one”
OK, once more for the people in the back for “I could care less.”
It started as a variation of “I couldn’t care less” in the 1940s meaning the same “I don’t care” but with the negation moved from the auxiliary verb to the subject in the forms of “Nobody” or “No one” “could care less.” That started gaining currency in the 1950s, and by the late 1950s, you started seeing it without the negation in the subject as “I could care less,” because by 1960 articles started appearing complaining about the usage. That’s the actual history of the usage.
That was cruel.
Do you have anything to support that extended version claim? I can find references to “master of none” as far back as the early 1800s, but nary a mention “better than a master of one,” which seems to be a recent addition.
Reminds me of a ‘Three Stooges’ bit-- they’re planning to go hunting. Moe stops the car and says to Larry “go see if that sign over there says anything about hunting on this land”. Larry walks over and looks at the sign, which says “Fine for hunting”. He goes back to the car. Moe asks “did the sign say we can’t hunt here?” Larry: “no, it’s fine”.
I stand corrected. It appears that the final phrase seems to have been added as late as the current century but has been spread all over the internet as the “true origins” of the phrase. And I fell for it. Mea culpa.
In the early 80s, living in Ontario, I subscribed to a legal newspaper. It reported a court case where someone fought a parking ticket (or maybe a tow) based on the sign having said “Fine for parking”. Judge basically said “Nice try, pay the man, next…” but I liked it!