4 ms·
It's jibe :)
by robbiemitchell 6y ago
It's jibe :)
- scarface74 6y agoI know. That was the idea. It’s one of those mistakes that is like nails on a chalkboard for me.
- robbiemitchell 6y agoYou got me
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- xdavidliu 6y agoI was expecting you to make another one, but "nails on a chalkboard" seems to be the correct usage. Am just ever so slightly disappointed.
- OJFord 6y agoMeh, 'I could care less'. ...I can barely bring myself to type and submit that...
- qubex 6y agoI’m (half-)British and I consider “could care less” a hideous American corruption. Recently I successfully argued my case with an American friend, not coincidentally a physicist, by analogy to zero-point energy.
- encom 6y agoVery related David Mitchell rant: "Dear America..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw
- uep 6y agoWhen I hear someone say it, I often respond that "I could care less, but only a little bit" to make the point about that phrase.
- OJFord 6y agoYes so am I (person you're replying to) - fully - and also consider it both hideous and American. I wouldn't call it a corruption though, because I've never actually heard it in Britain; just American film and television, and even on HN.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- glangdale 6y agoBoth "I could care less" and "I couldn't care less" make sense. If you emphasize the second word ("I could care less") and phrase it in a tentative tone of voice it conveys the meaning - i.e. it's possible that I could somehow care less, but it's a theoretical possibility only.
- xdavidliu 6y agothat's kind of a stretch; I would imagine "I couldn't care less" is vastly preferred, and the people that use "I could care less" are most likely doing so out of ignorance and not an intent to convey the subtle "theoretical possibility"
- zimpenfish 6y agoFWIW Professional Linguists think it's perfectly fine to say "I could care less" and that people who peeve about it are just pointless peevers who don't understand how language works.
- xdavidliu 6y agoThat's not the point: "I could care less" is grammatically correct, but the meaning is not what was intended. If I had a cup and wanted to tell you there's no more beer in the cup, I wouldn't say "there's beer in the cup", even though the sentence "there's beer in the cup" would be accepted by professional linguists.
- zimpenfish 6y ago> That's not the point: "I could care less" is grammatically correct, but the meaning is not what was intended. The intended meaning is obvious. There's plenty of colloquial phrases which say one thing but mean another: "I could murder him", for example, doesn't literally mean that. That is how language works. And, if you saying "there's beer in the cup" was understood by everyone as meaning "there's no more beer in the cup", professional linguists and dictionaries would be A-OK with that interpretation.
- stingraycharles 6y agoActually, thanks for doing this. As a non-native, frequent misspellings are incredibly annoying as it’s difficult to see which one’s correct. Now I learned not one but two important correct spellings. Thanks!