Could you care less or couldn't you care less?

boing
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Originally published at: Could you care less or couldn't you care less? - Boing Boing

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Right? Language changes constantly, so all sorts of currently “correct” usages were once deemed incorrect.

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I could care less, but I consciously choose not to.

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From Popkin!

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I could care less, but I’d have to try.

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I could care less, but honestly, it’s not worth the trouble of finding a global minimum.

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Please refer to this topic for detailed analysis of the question:

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There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and people policing your grammar.

If you’re looking for an entertaining and accessible book on linguistics, then I recommend The Evolution of Language by Guy Deutscher. I am pretty sure he even traces the history of how the meaning of certain words shifted from positive to negative connotation over time.

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Indeed. “I could care less” became an idiom long ago, for a native speaker it’s obvious what people want to express. Only for **non-**native speakers, who might have piece the meaning together by looking at the individual words, it might be not so clear.

Looking at google Ngram, “I could care less” has seen more use than “I couldn’t care less” since 1973.

Most of these arguments around correct language boil down to “people should not use language in a way that I’m not used to because that pisses me off.” So you can be pissed of, you can even try to correct other people, which will piss them off, too, but they will continue to speak as they please irregardless. Or you can discover that you actually could care less abut these things.

Edit: forgot “non-”

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I could not care any less about this topic but don’t get me started on the correct usage of lose/loose - where I wish I could care less…

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I think of it this way:

“I could care less” is actually a truncation of “I could care less but it would take too much effort,” and the speaker doesn’t care enough to complete the sentence.

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CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

/s

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this is my interpretation of it as well. even though that probably is a bacronym or no-prize… an after the fact explanation

i suspect it has something to do with wanting to remove the “not” in there… since the phrase negates something, the “not” probably winds up feeling like a double negative to native speakers

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No one beat me to this?

(Relevant portion just after 01:05)

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The one that annoys me (though usually not to the point of correcting anyone) is “you can’t have your cake and eat it too.” Of course you can, that’s the whole point of having cake. The original, sensical version of the phrase is ”you can’t eat your cake and have it too.” Because once a cake is eaten you no longer have it, duh.

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… also this one

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You can’t have your way with your cake and then eat it afterwards because it’s more of a liquid at that point.

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