“I could care less” is just wrong
3 August, 2008 | Tagged with thoughts | 10 Comments
Just a quick note about something that really annoys me from time to time. Americans who say “I could care less” to mean they don’t care.
I should add that I’m not being in any way anti-American, it’s just that this particular grammatical error has developed only in American-English, and is not present in British-English. I’m not just talking about bad-English, this phrase in particular means exactly the opposite of its intended meaning.
Let’s assume that I don’t care about something at all. That would mean I care a zero amount about it. I could NOT care any less than zero about it. I couldn’t care less.
On the other hand, if I do care about something, then you could say that I care more than a zero amount about it. If I’m caring more than zero about it, I could care less.
To sum up, if you say “I could care less” then that means that you do care. If you mean to say that you don’t care, you need to say “I couldn’t care less”.
That concludes today’s English lesson!
Are there any nonsensical common phrases that you find annoying? Please click here and leave a comment.
August 4th, 2008 at 12:20 am (#)
Oh man, so true.
Misuse of “begging the question” gets on my nerves a bit, but the wrong sense that lots of people use it in is more consistent with the words, so I reckon we should just give it up.
August 4th, 2008 at 7:01 am (#)
“My Bad” annoys me.
Another Americanism, which i guess makes sense gramatically.
I just think people could say “Oops” or “Sorry”!
August 4th, 2008 at 9:24 am (#)
Another thing that annoys me is when people have an itch and they say they’ll “itch it”.
If you have an itch, you scratch it, not itch it!
August 4th, 2008 at 9:51 am (#)
I’m trying to keep the creeping Americanisms out of my daughters’ language. Currently the challenge is “done”. You’re not done, you’re finished!
August 18th, 2008 at 3:14 pm (#)
Wanted to leave a response to sky page - but it wouldn’t give me that option!
August 21st, 2008 at 3:16 pm (#)
Hi, Peri. Unfortunately I had to close the commenting on my blog post about Sky plus system faults 18 months ago. The old blog was creaking under the strain of 400+ comments on one entry!
I hope you found the advice there to be useful.
thanks,
Paul
September 8th, 2008 at 1:01 pm (#)
The word ‘just’ seems to get misplaced a lot recently:
“I’m not just a clone”
“I’m just not a clone” - to quote ‘The Streets’.
One of these makes sense, the other is totally incorrect - and I keep hearing it in movies, tv, music and conversation.
Let’s change the line a little:
“I’m not just a web developer”
“I’m just not a web developer” - much better.
While we’re on the subject: Anyone who can’t get ‘their’, ‘there’ and ‘they’re’ right makes me want to kill.
In fact there are several of those that annoy me: ‘to’, ‘too’ and ‘two’ or ‘your’ and ‘you’re’ for instance.
I used to know a guy who couldn’t get ‘no’ and ‘know’ the right way around.
And it’s ‘ASK’ not ‘AKS’…
September 11th, 2008 at 2:03 pm (#)
@SimianE - Your examples have different meanings, so they’re both valid.
“I’m not just a web designer” would mean I am a web designer, and I am other things as well.
“I’m just not a web designer” would mean I’ve tried to be a web designer, but found that it’s not for me.
September 11th, 2008 at 2:16 pm (#)
Yes, that’s actually my point.
I keep hearing people move the word ‘just’ as in the first example - my ‘web developer’ example mearly illustrates the point, as it’s easier to see from this that the position of the word ‘just’ gives the phrase a completely different meaning.
October 16th, 2008 at 3:40 pm (#)
Hi Paul,
‘Cheap at half the price’, well obviously it is, surely the quote should be ‘Cheap at twice the price’, it makes much more sense.
Cheers!!! Gray