[ExI] You know what?

[Lee Corbin]

BillK writes

> <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.

So "recently"!  Hmm, thanks for this.

> 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.

"Sarcastic"?  That's odd. Yes, it's extreme, but so is, for example
"go jump in the lake". The speaker is not really requesting self-
ablution, not, to me, being sarcastic.

> The inverted form 'I could care less' was coined in the US
> and is found only here, recorded in print by 1966.

Amazing.  Damien has suggested that this arose in the black
underclass, and will perhaps explain.  Now for some reason

> 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'.

Now this is the exact *opposite* of what you want your interlocutor
to do. Therefore it does seems sarcastic to me.

Lee

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