
XKCD – I Could Care Less - elwell
http://xkcd.com/1576/
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Amorymeltzer
Maybe it's just me, but I always took "I could care less" to be a shortening
of "I couldn't care less". Growing up, we always just said "I could care",
which has an added "...but I don't" dimension; everyone seemed to understand
just fine.

~~~
stan_rogers
It's a Yiddishism, as far as anyone has been able to trace it. There is an
implied second half, as if to say that caring less would involve some sort of
effort or commitment beyond what is warranted. It comes to us the same way as
_already_ playing the part of the German/Yiddish _schon_ does ("Will you hurry
up already!").

Unfortunately, the 18th-century idea that English should play by the strict
rules of logic on a structure that would make learning serious academic
languages like Latin and Greek easier has become pervasive. The grammar
textbooks of my youth no longer carried titles like _An accidence to the
English tongue, chiefly for the use of such boys and men as have never learned
Latin perfectly, and for the benefit of the female sex, also for the Welch,
Irish, Scotch and foreigners_ , but the sentiment was largely the same, and
the grammar they described were every bit as foreign to the actual grammar of
English as Latin itself.

