I just ran into one of my pet hates again. It seems to be mainly Americans that I have heard/read using this little gem but I have no doubt that other English speakers do it too.
Now, maybe I am miss understanding but I don't think do. The context in which my little bug bear is used seems to indicate that I have properly understood the intent. Unfortunately I don't have any examples to hand. The phrase that bugs me is . . . . . . .
"I could care less".
Or "I could give a shit",
or any variation on this theme,
What they actually mean is that they COULD NOT care less or they COULD NOT give a shit. At least from the context that's what it seems they mean.
When you use one of the two offending phrases what you are actually saying is;
"There is a way in which I could actually care less about this subject/person/thing so I do in fact care about it to some degree."
See the difference ? Or have I explained far too ineptly ? If you mean you couldn't give a flying monkeys uncle about something please say so.
Of course it could be that "I could give a shit" is a truncated version of "I could give a shit, but I don't" but I have never heard it said with any inflection that would hint at that.
Now that I have had my little rant on the subject someone might feel it appropriate to point out that neither my grammar, spelling, nor punctuation are perfect and allude to stones and glasshouses. Know what ?
I couldn't give a shit.
Friday, 5 October 2007
A Little Word About Giving A Shit
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2 comments:
Hi from Canada. Yeah, some say "i could care less" and "give a shit" here too. I know what they mean and it dos'nt bother me. The one that bothers me is when they say "i seen it" but i figured it out - the people who say this are from the east coast. Unfortunately theres been a mass migration of them to the west and our english is all contaminated now.
So, if you hear a Canuck saying it don't think its all Canadians cuz its not.
Janice (no blog)
Hi Janice, thanks for dropping by.
I know it's a little thing to get up in arms about but there you have it, I can be childish sometimes. Okay, a lot of the time.
Send those pesky eastcoasters back and tell them to take their language contamination back too.
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