Comment

Comment by doone on April 20, 2012 at 3:56pm

Comment by Don on April 20, 2012 at 2:50pm

"In no wise" must have been the phrase you had in mind, DG. It's a not-uncommon but archaic expression, really, one that has survived to the degree that it has survived maybe because it appears often in some translations of the bible.

As for "I could care less," it's an idiomatic form of "I couldn't care less." They are syntactically opposite, but they mean the same thing. Though "I could care less" is sarcastic in origin, hardly anyone (at least in the US) thinks of it that way now, because it's become common, and its meaning is plain, if illogical.

Comment by Dallas the Phallus on April 20, 2012 at 9:57am

Don, I don't see "I could care less" as being especially sarcastic. Not from what I recall, or what I have experienced with local use. Both phrases are used to just mean "I don't care at all."

 

I would never have put it in the same catagory as "tell me about it" or "I should be so lucky." Perhaps that's a regional thing.

Comment by Dallas the Phallus on April 20, 2012 at 9:53am

Don, you can probably help me with this. On another site I just typed: That in no ways indicates that it is.....

And I wasn't confident that in no ways was correct. I almost changed it to in no way, but then settled for That does not indicate....

It struck me that ways may be being confused with wise, as we may use otherwise, or counter clockwise. It seems to me I've heard some British TV shows in which they use the phrase no wise, but that may just be a mishearing on my part.

I know that using wise as a suffix is frowned upon, if used too liberally, as in timewise, or bookwise, or whatever. But I can see it being used in my original sentence: That in no wise indicates that...

Am I just being crazy here? Is this just my bad memory or a misunderstaning on my part?

 

Comment by Chris on April 19, 2012 at 4:01am

Hit self in forehead!

Comment by Don on April 17, 2012 at 9:19am

In America at least, “I could care less” and “I couldn’t care less” have come to mean the same thing. The first expression, however, is sarcastic.  It’s taken to mean the opposite of what it says.  Like “Tell me about it,” which means “Don’t tell me about it [because I already know].”

As Michael Quinion says in World Wide Words, “There’s a close link between the stress pattern of ‘I could care less’ and the kind that appears in certain sarcastic or self-deprecatory phrases that are associated with the Yiddish heritage and (especially) New York Jewish speech. Perhaps the best known is ‘I should be so lucky!’ in which the real sense is often “’ have no hope of being so lucky,’ a closely similar stress pattern with the same sarcastic inversion of meaning.”

Comment by Chris on April 16, 2012 at 10:13pm

People who say "I could care less" usually mean and should say "I couldn't care less."

I just came across the origin of the word Apocalypse. It comes from the Greek word apokálypse meaning the "lifting of the veil," or "the disclosure of something hidden from the majority of mankind in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception."

How did it get from that to the final destruction of the world, or an event involving destruction, or damage on an awesome, or catastrophic scale?

Comment by Dallas the Phallus on April 6, 2012 at 9:07pm

"I could care fewer" (and other NGD musings)

Apparently I have completely lost my sensitivity to the Timeliness Mandate in which all true journalists believe. Am I rebelling against all those years of deadlines, or am I just slower on the draw these days? Whatever; I may be 10 days late (or 355 days early), but I’m still going to offer a couple of comments on National Grammar Day, since I was otherwise occupied when it rolled around way back on March 4.

First, of all the celebratory haiku and faux-haiku selected by the NGD judges in this year's contest, the one I found totally irresistible was a mischievous rebuke to humorless prescriptivism submitted by Tom Freeman (no relation!):

People shouldn't say
"I could care less" when they mean
"I could care fewer"

Words to live by. [continue]

Comment by Dallas the Phallus on April 6, 2012 at 9:02pm

NYT BLOG: DRAFT

Draft features essays by grammarians, historians, linguists, journalists, novelists and others on the art of writing — from the comma to the tweet to the novel — and why a well-crafted sentence matters more than ever in the digital age.

Comment by Michel on April 2, 2012 at 5:35pm

WORD-OF-THE-DAY:

EXCITON: The bound pairs of electrons and holes that determine the optical properties of semiconductors and enable them to function as novel optoelectronic devices.

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