On another thread, a poster said that Iraq was “on the brink of a bloody civil war,” and I realized that I’ve been hearing that a lot lately. “On the brink of civil war.” “On the edge of civil war.” Lots of commentators have been saying that.
And it made me wonder: Is there a tipping point of some sort? Are we waiting for some type of official declaration? Because people of the same nationality are busy aggressively killing each other. What makes them NOT at civil war already? Do they need uniforms, flags, and a catchy anthem or something? Putting aside the notion that “civil war” is right up there with “jumbo shrimp” as an oxymoron (or “President Bush,” which is a plain old moron), at what point amidst the rapidly ascending body count, explosions, beheadings and murders, does someone say, “Okay, that’s it, they’ve jumped over the brink and it’s civil war.”
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Yet you keep coming back here…
Tired of the lies of Faux News and come here for a dose of the truth you can’t handle?
And that’s couldn’t care less. Saying you could care less means that you care considerably more than you could now.
Luigi, feel free to reword others’ posts so that it sounds better to you. Whatever floats your boat and makes you happy eventhough ‘could not care less’ doesn’t make sense.
*Buzz* Ooohh, completely wrong, but thanks for playing.
As anyone with the slightest understanding of the english language knows, “I could not care less,” is a perfectly clear statement indicating that one cares so little that it is indeed impossible to care less. Hyperbolic perhaps, but grammatically sound.
-Rex Hondo-
Novafan:
“I could not care less” – my level of caring about the topic could not possibly be any lower than it is right now. I can’t care any less than I do now.
“I could care less” – I care about the topic somewhat, as it is possible that I could care less than I do now.
ex. “Novafan couldn’t care less about the use of proper grammar in online posts.”
‘Tother hand, that does make your statement correct – most of us could, if we really tried, abandon our humanity and care just a little bit less about the plight of the Iraqi people than we do now. We choose, however, to keep that little flame flickering, and to give a šhìŧ about the suffering of people who don’t actually impinge on our daily lives.
Let’s try not to get your knickers in a bunch over the use of or, in your view, a misuse of a word.
http://www.word-detective.com/061405.html
Dear Word Detective: I notice in US publications the phrase “could care less” appears, and I have never understood the logic of the phrase. In the UK, the phrase is “couldn’t care less,” as in “I could not possibly care any less than I do at the moment,” which seems more logical. Any thoughts on this? — Iain Dover.
Just one: now you’ve done it. You’ve landed smack dab in the middle of one of our most incendiary usage squabbles, and probably given every grammar grump reading this a case of the raving wimwams. Any moment they’ll start running around in circles tearing out their hair and shrieking about loose-lipped American morons making us look bad in front of the Brits. And then, of course, they’ll be writing to me. Actually, they already are — I get letters every week imploring me to “do something” to save the English language from rampant adverb abuse or dangerously dangling participles. Newsflash, gang: if I possessed super mind-control powers, I’d have our two dogs mowing the lawn.
You’re correct that “I couldn’t care less” is the more “logical” form of the idiom, as well as the older, first appearing in the 1940s as opposed to the “could care less” form, which apparently dates to the 1960s. We in the US may be slightly more likely to use the newer form than you folks, but “couldn’t care less” is commonly used (and vigorously defended) here, too.
So, is “I could care less” an illogical abomination, as the language purists proclaim? Not at all. It’s simply an ironic or sarcastic idiom, one of several in common use, including “very funny” (meaning “not funny at all”), “big deal” (meaning “not important”) and “oh sure” (meaning “I don’t believe you”). Again, “I could care less” is an idiom, a figure of speech whose sum is greater than the total of its parts. To analyze the phrase as “‘I could care less’ means ‘I must care somewhat, therefore I do care'” misses the sarcastic element carrying the negative connotation and filling in for the missing “not.” Sentences such as “That will teach you to take your cat on a roller coaster” depend on the kind of same sarcastic reversal.
Negatives in English often depend on negation via sarcasm and irony. There’s a story, no doubt apocryphal but fun anyway, about an English professor lecturing to his class one day. “In English,” he says, “a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative.” A voice from the back of the room then pipes up, “Yeah, right.”
That’s bûllšhìŧ. Nobody uses that phrase sarcastically or ironically.