Having, Eating and Caring Less
Just a few common sayings that are oddly wrong - if you think about it.
Oddly Wrong: You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Correct: You can’t eat your cake and have it too.
Many people say “You can’t have your cake and eat it too” but why not? I mean, you CAN have your cake and THEN eat it - if you do it in that order.
The intended meaning is, “You can’t eat your cake AND (then still) have it too.”
Oddly Wrong: I could care less.
Correct: I couldn’t care less.
Many people say “I could care less.”, but this has the opposite of the desired meaning. Essentially this means there is at least one thing you could care less about. It could possibly mean there are multitude of things you dislike more than what is being discussed:
“I could care less about chocolate, because I love it!”
Double negatives also annoy me to no end. But come to think of it, maybe, “You can’t have no cake and eat it too” makes perfect sense…
Well, if you couldn’t care less about how people use the language or eat their cake, how about this? Until a few minutes ago, I didn’t think my copy of Dreamweaver was that old; It seems like yesterday I bought it brand spanking new. It is Dreamweaver MX 2004 (before Adobe).
The built in spell checker had no entry for ’spam’, ’spammer’, ’spammers’, ‘rss’, ‘wiki’ or ‘podcasts’. Now, I understand about podcasts and wiki, but spam? I remember hitting the delete in my Outlook Express way back in the last millennia (1990s).
Maybe it is time for an upgrade.
The ‘I could care less’ example could well be an Americanism, as certainly myself and everybody I’ve ever heard use the line around me (being a Brit) says ‘I couldn’t care less’.
First time poster, but have been reading for a few months now. Good stuff!
Thanks for the comment Mark!
>>The ‘I could care less’ example could well be an Americanism
Must be. I hear it often here in Florida. So often, I have to stop myself before saying it to make sure I have the right ‘version’. I usually hum the tune of Sinatra’s “I Couldn’t Care Less”. The extra syllable for the “n’t” reminds me it is “Couldn’t”