[ExI] You know what?

[BillK]

On Jan 25, 2008 3:35 AM, Lee Corbin wrote:
<snip>
> My own annoyance is mostly that this phrase is not logical (i.e.
> violates the logic wherein if one could not care less, then one
> is asserting that he's already at the minimum of interest), but it's
> also from the disgust I have for those who slavishly imitate.
>

Can't argue with that.   :)

<http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/g09.html>
The expression 'I could not care less' originally meant 'it would be
impossible for me to care less than I do because I do not care at
all'. It was originally a British saying and came to the US in the
1950s. It is senseless to transform it into the now-common 'I could
care less'. If you could care less, that means you care at least a
little. The original is quite sarcastic and the other form is clearly
nonsense. The inverted form 'I could care less' was coined in the US
and is found only here, recorded in print by 1966. The question is,
something caused the negative to vanish even while the original form
of the expression was still very much in vogue and available for
comparison - so what was it? There are other American English
expressions that have a similar sarcastic inversion of an apparent
sense, such as 'Tell me about it!', which usually means 'Don't tell me
about it, because I know all about it already'. The Yiddish 'I should
be so lucky!', in which the real sense is often 'I have no hope of
being so lucky', has a similar stress pattern with the same sarcastic
inversion of meaning as does 'I could care less'.

See also:
<http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ico1.htm>

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Perhaps the answer is that Americans didn't understand British sarcasm.  :)

BillK