etymology - When did "I could care less" (rather than "I couldn't care less") become popular?


What decade? Any particular reason?


This is an etymological/historical question, not a grammar question.



Answer



I think an NGram here is not too misleading:


British English British English 'care less'


American English enter image description here


(note that "couldn't" and "could not" is indexed as the same by Google NGrams).


So the answer to 'when' is roughly 1950 for the correct negative and 1960 for the erroneous positive for both BrE and AmE, but popularity for the positive rose quicker in the US to 2/5 of the negative compared to 1/7 for BrE.


All the usual caveats for NGrams apply.


As to reasons, without thorough and tedious scholarship (or being lucky which in this case I am not), I can only conjecture that the start in 1940 was in some novel or radio show that was popular in both US and UK, and similarly for the positive version in 1960. But that is empty speculation. If only the results from NGrams were sortable by date... Oh... It is sortable by date...


The earliest instance given for 'couldn't' is:


Oedipus Tyrranus


The year given is 1848, which is strange because 1) by that year Sophocles had been dead 200 years, 2) the translator Peter Meineck was born in 1967, well after both phrases appeared, and 3) Amazon says the translation was in published in 2000 so really NGrams is somewhat unreliable. Thanks, Google.


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