So, in essence, "giving a shit" in this context means being highly dedicated, passionate, and attentive to the details, which often leads to a better outcome and a more satisfying experience for the customer
Thanks for posting this. I'd seen it before and was looking for it recently, so it's now safely bookmarked.
English is such a weird language...
I can also highly recommend the one about eating and children in Africa - my favorite :)
Reminds me of Rob Schneider's "Dude" bit (He's not usually my fave, but this was fairly good): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfI4cjGiJGE
https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/2rgl7i/how_did_i...
Further down is the suggestion that "give" in the phrase, means "care". Which it does, in part, but as the way language goes, so many words and phrases have double meanings that merge to make one subtle meaning.
"I couldn't give a toss," is a common variant. As is, "I couldn't give a flying fuck." But neither has the positive version in the same way — you don't normally give a toss about something specific, and a flying fuck is never positive. But, interestingly, you can give a toss in general.
English, as you have realised, has layers of weirdness and subtle traps.
Not in the US - this is very British.
That and "literally" being so frequently abused it now has a dictionary entry to explain that it can also be used to emphatically refer to non literal stuff.
If you think showing enthusiasm for stuff by handing over a turd is weird, you'd also love the (nineties) British habit of complimenting something by saying it's "the dogs bollocks", as if canine testes were renowned for their desirability...
(I believe this is the origin of the saying)
Describing a very low lower-bound doesn’t technically say anything negative, but it sure implies it.
E.g. your example "how was your food" ... "it was edible".
If you've just been to a fairly average restaurant, that would be understood to mean it wasn't terrible but you didn't really enjoy it.
If you're at a close friend's house for dinner and they served something amazing, and you replied "it was edible", it would be understood to mean that it was really good and far better than anything you could have made yourself. If you said the same thing to a mutual friend who didn't know about their cooking skills, it would be interpreted negatively.
Another example would be replying to "How are you?" with "I'm not dead yet!" could mean anything without context, but most likely would be said to someone who knew your situation and that there'd been bad stuff going on, and would probably mean you were actually doing better than might be expected.
As for "I could care less", I think it was probably just misheard as the negative is very weak "I could'(n) care less". Coupled with the end of "could" and start of "care" being the about the same position in the mouth, and the (n) requires the tongue to quickly block and release the air in the mouth whilst also nasalising the sound that lasts a fraction of a second, it would be easy for a lazy speaker to not make it clear and/or omit it, and then if the listener never bothered to think about the meaning, they could repeat it wrongly. The deliberately inverted meaning only really makes sense if it was followed by "but" that later got omitted. To me "I could care less, but ..." (and then just stopping) would have about the same effect as "I couldn't care less".
But, I prefer to be wrong in a way that makes me believe people are being clever.
I responded with one of my favorite [passive aggressive] formal responses: "From now on I won't 'give a shit,' anymore. Instead, I'll start 'giving a hoot'."
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English is weird. The language of exceptions [similar to chemistry].
I hate it when the best version of a phrase has a swear word; I don't blame you for using it.
"Thank you for at least SEEMING to give a shit about your job."
or,
"Thank you for giving the impression that you might actually give a shit about this place."
Hoot hoot.
Unfortunately, I'm one of few people nowadays that just don't swear at all.
Yes, I'm peculiar. Oh well.
However, I'm also trying to remove the use of non-vulgar words where others would use swear words, such as just saying, "I hate that thing," instead of "I hate that bloomin' thing."
Benefits? Having a cleaner mouth gives me a perception advantage. Also, it forces me to be more creative with how I express myself, which increases my communication skills and wordsmithing in writing.
Not really helpful as a rubric honestly. If you can decide one day a word isn't a swear word but the next maybe you feel like it, seems like you're more interested in crafting and following arbitrary rules than any benefit gained from such rules.
> However, I'm also trying to remove the use of non-vulgar words where others would use swear words, such as just saying, "I hate that thing," instead of "I hate that bloomin' thing."
Is the constant self policing not a mental burden?
> Benefits? Having a cleaner mouth gives me a perception advantage. Also, it forces me to be more creative with how I express myself, which increases my communication skills and wordsmithing in writing.
You can still be expressive and have a deep appreciation and use of diction, with out arbitrary limits to your vocabulary.
If your saying you are attempting to alter your own perspective by adjusting your language to better match your perspective, I agree with the practice, just unclear how a loosely and arbitrary group of words are harming you in material way.
Reduce, Re-use, Recycle [from same era marketing].
I did stop reading there. I was 100% convinced that this meant that they couldn't care less about what they were doing, yet their homepage seemed to indicate that they'd give a lot of dedication to detail.
In German "drauf scheißen" (to shit on something) means to not care at all about a given thing.
If they didn't give a shit that would mean they didn't care and this is the opposite.
I think "shit" in English is one of the most linguistically flexible words, used in various ways, from very positive ("It's the shit!") to negative ("It's shit") meanings.
As another commenter said, the positive meaning of "shit" often seems to be the result of reversing a common phrase. "I don't give a shit" means I don't care at all, not even a shit; and later the opposite phrase started to be used, "I give a shit" to mean I do care about it.
It's one of many confusing and illogical things about English.
I feel the Brits had it the right way and the Americans oddly reversed it.
But honestly shit and fuck can fill any English sentence.
Most business interactions are with people who literally do not care at all. Will not consider alternatives, will not give advice, will not tell you you are being silly.
In that context, anything better than that is a big deal. You sometimes encounter people who care a lot, but you don’t usually get to compare them with someone who cares only a little. You still get to compare them with the rest who “give zero shits”.
But the much more common interpretation "you ain't shit" = "you are less than shit" = "you are worthless/nothing". See also "it don't mean shit".
If you hear “You ain’t shit“, the speaker does not hold you in high regard.
And for the other one, I've heard "It's the shit" for good (although to me, that's definitely an Americanism that became popular in the UK in the 90s), but never "You're the shit" on its own. But just to show how random this is, "You're the shit who did this!" definitely isn't positive!
Cool, here's a good example: https://youtu.be/HCm_jfLmBEE
> But just to show how random this is, "You're the shit who did this!" definitely isn't positive!
For sure. In my experience, in the U.S. that use is almost always preceded by "little": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx_giDzTkeg
Another variant you may not have heard is "shitass", used a lot in Reservation Dogs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYMG0Guy5WI
> For sure. In my experience, in the U.S. that use is almost always preceded by "little":
Yeah, we often say "little shit" in the UK if we want to emphasis how unimportant we thing they are.
That said, I've since thought of some almost counter examples to my original comment. I know "shizzle" derives from "shit", and I have heard "It's the shizzle" before (but again originally from US sources, it became a popular phrase in the UK around the late 90s, but largely disappeared now). Thinking back, I've also heard "It's the m**f**g shit man!" but it was always done in an over-the-top way, also rarely, and usually as a parody.
Maybe it's just the intensifier in that. I think "It's good shit" and "It's bad shit" mean the same as without "shit". And I still don't think I've ever just heard "It's the shit" on its own, other than that source you cited and that's from the US not the UK.
Even "That's the shit" to me would just mean "this is the stuff" with an implication that there's something wrong with it, maybe illegal, maybe broken, whatever.
In the UK, "the shits" also refers to diarrhea, so maybe that's why we don't use "the shit" in a positive sense here. Of course, maybe the younger generation do, and I've just never noticed it.
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/07/02/garbage-is-too...
Because I give a shit.