“I could care less” is just wrong
3 August, 2008 | Tagged with thoughts
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.
