Re: documentary on salinger?

Well, not necessarily. Saying "I could give a rat's butt" simply means that
you are, indeed, in possession of a rat's butt and could give it (presumably
in exchange for an answer about this question).

Now, if you were to say, "I couldn't give a rat's butt" ("rat's ass" is the
real phrase -- and it has a lot more going for it tonally, with that draw out
ssss sound), I think you'd be really devaluing the topic at hand. I'm not
quite sure how this works out, though. I suspect that you'd be saying your
valuation of this topic is about equivalent to your valuation of a rat's butt
-- both equally low. But I don't know how the grammar of the sentence
actually produces this meaning.

Jim

Yocum Daniel GS 21 CES/CEOE wrote:

> I could give a rat's butt. Does this mean that rat's butts are valuable?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Rovira [mailto:jrovira@drew.edu]
> Sent: Friday, November 08, 2002 8:13 PM
> To: bananafish@roughdraft.org
> Subject: Re: documentary on salinger?
>
> I've always wondered if that phrase really worked:
>
> "I could care less."
>
> I know that's how people use it. But it just doesn't make sense to me.
> It sounds like it is, indeed, possible for you to care less, meaning
> that you still do care a little bit, if only a very little bit. It's
> like saying, I could hate it more. It means you don't hate something as
> much as you possibly could.
>
> Now, if you were to say, I couldn't care less -- now that would be
> saying something. It's simply not possible to care less in this case.
> It would mean that you care for this as little as it is possible to care
> for it. You care for it to the point of not caring at all -- utterly.
>
> Now this is a more sensible expression of contempt.
>
> The real question now is, could you or could you not care less? :)
>
> Jim
>
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Received on Tue Nov 12 11:09:45 2002