And it is beyond me how "I couldn't care less" has turned into "I could care less," completely reversing it's meaning while being used in the sense of the original _expression_. End of Rant.
Sorry,
Chuck
If you really want to know, check out
http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-ico1.htm,
from wh. the following is excerpted:
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 "I have no hope of
being so lucky", a closely similar stress pattern with the same
sarcastic inversion of meaning. There's no evidence to suggest
that I could care less came directly from Yiddish, but the
similarity is suggestive. There are other American expressions that
have a similar sarcastic inversion of apparent sense, such as Tell
me about it!, which usually means "Don't tell me about it,
because I know all about it already". These may come from similar
sources.
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