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Comment by coldpie | Hacker News Reader

With all the political discussion about Britain recently, the table/table antonym described in this list has come up among my friends lately. In Britain, you "table" a motion to put it up for consideration. In the US, if a motion is "tabled" it is put off until later. Very closely related but directly opposite meanings makes for some confusing discussions, where you need to know the nationality of the writer to have any chance of understanding the statement.

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A couple of others that baffle this British English speaker:

- "I could care less" meaning "I couldn't care less"

- "Entrée" meaning a main dish rather than a starter

I take "I could care less" to mean "I could care even less about this than I already do, that's how little it matters to me", but that could just be me trying to rationalize a mangled expression.

Well, yes, but it's always possible to care less about something, unless you are already at the state of absolute-uncaring. Therefore, "I could care less" does nothing to express the desired sentiment.

"I couldn't care less" is a much clearer reference to being at this state of absolute-uncaring.

I think the intended meaning by those who say it is: I'm currently caring too much because I'm talking about it even a little bit. I could easily care even less than this.

What you said exactly makes no sense. If you said "I could NOT care less" it would mean, you care so little that it is not possible to care less than you do currently.

Regardless, I think this is just a result of people getting lazy with their language... it is not meant to be said in this say, and is properly stated, "I couldn't care less". In the US (can't speak for elsewhere) people just repeat what they think others have said, to convey what they think they understood. This is the source of a lot of language rot.

“I could care less” is a bastardization if couldn’t care less. I have no source but I sincerely doubt “could care less” was the original usage.

Another one is the pattern “all X are not Y.” Vs “not all X are Y.”

We're getting quite off topic from antonyms, but:

> “I could care less” is a bastardization of couldn’t care less.

I've come to the conclusion that this bastardization came from the way "--dn't c--" feels in the mouth. Lots of consonant sounds in a row. Drop the "n't" and it feels much better to say, even though the phrase becomes nonsense. You even get a little bonus alliteration.

"I _could_ care less." It's meant to be a sarcastic expression. William Safire covered this (probably before you were born).

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/09/30/archives/on-language-twow...

Thanks for the link. It seems to support my hypothesis about "mouthfeel" and doesn't mention sarcasm at all, so I have to admit I don't understand your comment.

fortran77 mixed up two famous linguists. He probably meant to refer to Steven Pinker. Here's a blog discussing it since I can't link to the book:

https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2007/01/i-could-care-less...

It’s okay. The queen asked David Mitchell to have a quick word with Americans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw

Do many people really say "I could care less" instead of "couldn't"? I've never heard anyone say it, and the few times I've seen it used online the perpetrator has rightly been rounded upon.

If people do, what similar turns of phrase would they likewise mangle? "Well done son, I could be more proud", or "I'm completely thrilled, I could be happier", or "I'm at rock bottom, things could be worse".

Yes, I've definitely heard it many times. Unlike the other examples you suggest, I think it's become common enough to begin to be a semantic unit, whose meaning is not perceived to be a function of its parts.

-I could/couldn't care less: I feel this started out properly as "couldn't" and then people got lazy/used shortcuts in their speech. Very much like a "for all intentional purposes" type of phrase that has been incorrectly said -Entree: again just speculation... I think the US usage of this may have come from European multicourse meals... depending on the number of courses, you may start with hors d'oeuvres, soup, salad, etc... then move on to a First (Entree) and a Second as mains, before moving on to the wrap up with aperitifs, coffee, dessert, etc. As restaurants become more popular and accessible to the lower/working classes, courses were consolidated, and what was once called Entree/opener as a first main dish became the primary course of the meal.

It's a Yiddishism that spread outside of its community. For a while, already used as the Germans use schön and other similar constructions were also common. Some stuck as idioms of American English; others have faded.

There are a few people who think there's potentially a Yiddish aspect to "could care less". I don't know if this is accepted or not.

"In Defense of I Could Care Less": https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/03/why-i-could-care-le...

> A number of language writers have suggested that “could care less” has a sarcastic reading, conveying something like “Ha! As if there were something in the world I could care less about.” There are some American Yiddish-inflected phrases that work this way, like “I should be so lucky!” (meaning “there’s no way I’m ever gonna be that lucky”) or “I should care!” (why should I care?). Even if “could care less” didn’t originate from a sarcastic intent, it matches up well enough with these other forms in the language to help give it staying power.

"Caring About Whether You Couldn’t Care Less": https://www.dictionary.com/e/could-care-less/

I particularly like this argument from this second link:

> The argument of logic falls apart when you consider the fact that both these phrases are idioms. In English, along with other languages, idioms aren’t required to follow logic, and to point out the lack of logic in one idiom and not all idioms is…illogical. Take the expression “head over heels,” which makes far less sense than “heels over head” when you think about the physics of a somersault. It turns out “heels over head” entered English around 1400, over 250 years before “head over heels,” however, the “logical” version of this idiom hasn’t been in popular usage since the late Victorian era.

“moot” is another one.

In British English it means “disputable” while in American English it means “hypothetical”.

I'm not familiar with either of those meanings. To me it means something like "irrelevant".

Then you probably are a speaker of American English. Another meaning in AE is "a fact or question that's of little practical significance".

All of these have in common that they're more less the opposite of "something controversial or worth arguing about", which is the British English.

> Another meaning in AE is "a fact or question that's of little practical significance".

That is a meaning of "moot", but "hypothetical" is not. The word "another" was probably ill-advised there.

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