Have you ever heard the expression ‘I couldn’t care less’? We use it informally to show that we don’t feel upset about something.

For example:

A: What do you think about John getting that job you applied for?

B: I couldn’t care less about that job! I didn’t really want it anyway!

Now, you might think that maybe person B does care about not getting the job, and it’s true that we use this expression to hide how we really feel sometimes.

Weirdly, in American English the expression is the opposite – ‘I could care less’, but has the same meaning as the English version. I don’t know how that happened, but it must lead to some confusion every now and again (‘Do you care, or not?’).

There are a couple of other ways of saying ‘I couldn’t care less’, that are even less formal, that I thought I’d share with you. They’re very colloquial, so they’re just for use with your friends, definitely not something to say to your boss or your grandmother! The first is ‘I couldn’t give a monkey’s’, or ‘I don’t give a monkey’s’, and the second one is ‘I couldn’t (or don’t) give a toss’. They’re both pretty commonly used, but as I said, not suitable for polite conversation!

(Source: www.englishonline.org.cn)

Johnny Grammar is English Online's resident grammar teacher. Johnny loves to tackle your worst grammar nightmares and provide you with simple explanations.

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