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The phrase “I could care less” is often used incorrectly in American English, possibly due to laziness or irony. It may have originated from a Yiddish phrase or from Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. The correct version is “I couldn’t care less.”
“I could care less” is one of those idiomatic expressions, particularly in American English, that doesn’t necessarily mean what it says. There are many suggestions for the origin of the phrase, the most recent of which is that it is a corruption of “I couldn’t care less”, possibly first used in the UK in the 1940s. By the 1960s, Americans had adopted the slightly modified version, perhaps out of laziness, hard of hearing, or deliberate irony.
Many argue that it was laziness, just like the phrase “a hot cup of coffee,” which changes to “who wants a hot cup?” Most people would rather drink a cup of hot coffee or eat cake and eat it too. Simple reversals or word omissions can lead someone to say they could care less when in fact they don’t care at all.
There is some suggestion that the phrase “I care less” may have been adopted because it fits certain Yiddish phrases that deliberately mean the opposite and can be seen as sarcastic. Such phrases include, “I should be that lucky,” which actually means that it’s unlikely anyone will get lucky. Another phrase, “Tell me about it,” means the opposite, and is simply a way of agreeing with the speaker. Alternatively, pronouncing the term “Testify!” as used in some Christian churches it is a similar arrangement that rarely means that someone will sit or stand and give a testimony of how they converted to Christianity.
Another theory, put forward by linguistics specialist Henry Churchyard, has suggested that the statement “You know nothing and care less,” used in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, is the origin of the term. If this were the case, “not knowing” would be comparable to caring less about the little that one knows. The current version of the sentence would then represent the idiom by omission.
It has to be said that Mansfield Park is one of Austen’s least popular books and was not well received by critics during Austen’s time and thereafter. Whether people would mention it is a significant dispute, but if Austen used the term as a common one in her day, it’s possible it was already in use. The entire quote, “You know nothing and care less, as people say,” is important because it raises the possibility that the phrase was in use in Austen’s time and she is not its inventor.
In any case, “I couldn’t care less” is typically interpreted as not caring at all. Whether by omission, design, laziness or quotation, it is one of those confusing idioms that plague English learners.
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