| 词组 | could care less, couldn't care less |
| 释义 | could care less, couldn't care less Everyone knows that couldn't care less is the older form of the expression. Eric Partridge in A Dictionary of Catch Phrases (2d ed., 1985) says that the phrase arose around 1940 and was probably prompted by an earlier catch phrase, "I couldn't agree with you more." If we assume Partridge's date of origin refers to speech, it is hard to quibble. We do have a 1945 citation from a BBC war correspondent covering a British commando operation: • You would have thought that they were embarking on a Union picnic; they just couldn't care less — Stewart Macpherson, 24 Mar. 1945, in The Oxford Book of English Talk, ed. James Sunderland, 1953 The OED Supplement and the editor of the second edition of Partridge's book cite the phrase as the title of a book published in 1946. William Carigan, writing in the CEA Forum (October 1972), opines that the phrase was brought to the U.S. by GI's returning from World War II. The hypothesis is plausible even though we lack, at the present time, examples of immediate postwar use in the U.S. It was clearly established by the late 1950s and early 1960s: • To me the elaborate framework, and symbolism, was too much for such petty characters. I couldn't have cared less what happened to any of them —Flannery O'Connor, letter, 17 Jan. 1958 • 'Listen, Cuckoo, are you sure about Duddy and Yvette? I couldn't care less, but ' —Mordecai Richler, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, 1959 • "... Some place with air conditioning. And without a TV set. I couldn't care less about baseball." — James Baldwin, Another Country, 1962 • This time, the monkey could not have cared less; the snake held no terrors for it —Dean E. Wooldridge, The Machinery of the Brain, 1963 The origin of could care less is also obscure. All we know about it for sure is that it came later. Harper 1975, 1985 reports getting letters asking about the expression starting in 1960. That would suggest its existence in speech around that time. No printed examples have so far turned up that antedate the 1966 examples collected by James B. McMillan and cited in his article in American Speech (Fall 1978). Our earliest citation is from what appears to be a wire-service picture caption: • This roarless wonder at Chicago's Brookfield Zoo could care less about the old saying dealing with the advent of March —Springfield (Mass.) Republican, 2 Mar. 1968 The reason why the negative particle was lost without changing the meaning of the phrase has been the subject of much speculation, most of it not very convincing. No one seems to have advanced the simple idea that the rhythm of the phrase may be better for purposes of emphatic sarcasm with could care less, which would have its main stress on care, than with couldn't care less, where the stress would be more nearly equal on could and care. You, however, may not find this argument very convincing either. Another consideration not previously mentioned, we believe, is the existence of an intermediate form in which the negative element is divorced from could and comes earlier in the sentence: • ... none of these writers could care less about the "tradition of the novel" —Alfred Kazin, Saturday Rev., 3 July 1971 • But in Bloomingdale's nobody could care less, while here, everyone cares —Donald S. Warner, Punch, 12 Mar. 1975 These examples are, of course, too late to prove anything. If they had come before 1960, however, a line of development might have been postulated. The attitude of the commentators toward could care less has in general been negative, with Harper perhaps making the point most vehemently by calling it "an ignorant debasement of the language." Safire 1980 saw usage of could care less as having peaked in 1973; he dismissed it as defunct in 1980. But it has not disappeared: • Funny, ... it comes at a time when I really could care less —Robert Preston, quoted in People, 28 June 1982 Bernstein 1971 thought it not quite established then; if it becomes established, he says, it will be another example of "reverse English." Pairs of words or phrases that look like opposites but mean the same thing are not unknown in English: ravel/unravel, can but/cannot but, for instance. (For another case in which a negative construction and a positive construction mean the same thing, see but 4.) This is what our present evidence suggests: while could care less may be superior in speech for purposes of sarcasm, it is hard to be obviously sarcastic in print. This may explain why most writers, faced with putting the words on paper, choose the clearer couldn't care less. |
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