"I COULD care less" or "I COULDN'T care less" Which is it?

you added that!

I thought "fell" meant "lucky."

Abrasive? Moi? Perish the thought ... I'm a loveable, little fuzzball.

Chichan you said yourself, "how can sarcasm make something true or false" ? I asked that question earlier.

but you went on to say

"... "I could care less" has the same meaning as "I couldn't care less".... "

Which space-time continuum did you say you came from?

Where, in our Universe, does a statement, and the direct negation of that statement, have the same meaning?

But as folks who use English, we know that you don't use this phrase with sarcasm.

Damned academics.

When romance is at its zenith
And the compass points north
'Tis best to ask the groom
How he'd like to sally forth
For to take her from the sea
And land on the Nether-land shore
Might not be found as meet
As to use the tradesman's entrance.







Lord, I can't think of a bawdy word to rhyme with "shore." Not for the life of me, I can't.

English speakers do English a whole lot better than they analyse English.

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http://www.bartleby.com/64/C003/078.html

I could care less! you might say sometime in disgust. You might just as easily have said I couldn't care less and meant the same thing! How can this be? When taken literally, the phrase I could care less means "I care more than I might," rather than "I don't care at all." But the beauty of sarcasm is that it can turn meanings on their head, thus allowing could care less to work as an equivalent for couldn't care less. Because of its sarcasm, could care less is more informal than its negative counterpart and may be open to misinterpretation when used in writing. 1

The phrases cannot but and can but present a similar case of a positive and a negative meaning the same thing. For more on this, see cannot under Grammar.

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chichan

I took a look at The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.

and my considered opinion is balls.

the phrase in question is "COULD vs COULD NOT".

not

"cannot but
cannot help
cannot help but
cannot seem"

where the word cannot is modified by but help etc.

The stupid adoption of the phrase "I could care less"

as meaning the same as "I could not care less"

makes no sense, no matter what inflextion, accent,

layers of sarcasm etc is used with it.

Grammar has certain rules as a guide to meaning. A fairly basic rule is the negation of meaning of a statement by the operand NOT.

"Could" and "could not" have never, do not now, and never will mean the same. I am not confused about that, though if you want to take not confused as being synonomous with confused you're welcome.

Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

chichan

I took a look at The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.

and my considered opinion is balls.

the phrase in question is "COULD vs COULD NOT".

not

"cannot but
cannot help
cannot help but
cannot seem"

where the word cannot is modified by but help etc.

The stupid adoption of the phrase "I could care less"

as meaning the same as "I could not care less"

makes no sense, no matter what inflextion, accent,

layers of sarcasm etc is used with it.

Grammar has certain rules as a guide to meaning. A fairly basic rule is the negation of meaning of a statement by the operand NOT.

"Could" and "could not" have never, do not now, and never will mean the same. I am not confused about that, though if you want to take not confused as being synonomous with confused you're welcome.

It's a cardinal rule of language that what is
understood/grammatical in one dialect is sometimes not
so in another. 'bonnet' can never mean [car] 'hood' in
NaE, nor can 'boot' mean [car] 'trunk'.

These are just different definitions of words, not a grammatical question

These Briticisms sound strange, even laughable when
they're first encountered but a transplant to Britain
would have no trouble at all making the necessary
shift.

and visa versa. One could argue that English started in England

Actually, this is not completely true; adults become
somewhat fossilized in their language and do not make
the necessary shifts near as well as children do.

perhaps this is because we leave baby talk behind

Adults often try to think their way through language,

and whats wrong with that?

the results are all too often, shall we say, funny.

If you had read the AHD section I suggested you
probably would have noted that "[W]e use similar
"llogical" constructions all the time, such as I
don't think it will rain instead of I think it will
not rain.

I did read AHD my comment above still stands. There is no illogical construction here at all. The negative statement (i do not think) when conjoined with the positive statement (it will rain) has exactly the same logic and meaning as conjoining the positive statement (i do think) with the negative statement (it will not rain). Its just one use of English over another thats favoured, one is no more illogical than the other.

In this case, being illogical is just
speaking plain English.

as I said there is no logical error in the example you provided


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Cambridge Grammar of the English Language:
For many American speakers "I couldn't care less has
lost its negation and the expression is now "I could
care less", still with the idiomatic meaning "I do not
care at all".

For these speakers, 'care less' is no
longer an NPI [negatively oriented polarity-sensitive
item]; 'could care less' has become an idiom with a
negative meaning (approximately the opposite of its
literal meaning).

This is not an uncommon development;
it is seen again in the development from 'I don't know
beans about it' [meaning] "I don't know anything about
it" to 'I know beans about it' with the same meaning.

at first reading this seems plausible. But its not. Assuming beans to mean very little then the first statement : I DONT know (very little) about it, is illogical, its the same as saying I do know (the opposite of)(very little) about it i.e. a lot.

This is exactly the opposite of the meaning the speaker is trying to convey.

To go from that to saying I DO know beans (very little) about it is quite logical and perfectly conveys the meaning.

With could/could not we are going from sense to nonsense. From the logical statement I COULD NOT care less to the illogical statement (if its meaning is to be the same) of I COULD care less.

The examples are not the same. With the beans example the language is actually improving. The meaning is becoming clearer and more logical. With the could/could not example here, the meaning and logic is degraded and with it the language itself imo.


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[added emphasis is mine]

1 entry found for apprised.

ap·prise

To give notice to; inform: apprised us of our rights.

1 entry found for apprized.

ap·prize

To appreciate; value.

from dictionary.com

which is more better than yours

A call was placed to Erin McKean, the editor-in-chief of the second edition of NOAD. Upon being presented with the majority opinion, McKean confirmed that "esquivalience" was a fabricated word. She said that Oxford had included it in NOAD's first edition, in 2001, to protect the copyright of the electronic version of the text that accompanied most copies of the book. . . . The word has since been spotted on Dictionary.com, which cites Webster's New Millennium as its source. "It's interesting for us that we can see their methodology," McKean said. "Or lack thereof. It's like tagging and releasing giant turtles."

And of course, like all good upstanding Americans, I despise hearing "I could care less."