See could care less on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "An alteration of couldn’t care less (which is first attested slightly earlier), either:\n* by deliberate irony, or\n* by hyponegation, perhaps influenced by forms such as “as if I could care less”, “no one could care less”, and “to know little (or nothing) and care less”.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "could have cared less",
"tags": [
"past",
"perfect"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "verb",
"3": "past perfect",
"4": "could have cared less"
},
"expansion": "could care less (past perfect could have cared less)",
"name": "head"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "American English",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1967, American Cooperation, Washington, D.C.: American Institute of Cooperation, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 235:",
"text": "Farmers knew that dead fish made plants go better. They could care less about why that happened. Scientists could not sleep until they found out why.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1995 October 10, Thomas McGann (witness), Trademark Counterfeiting: Hearing before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, One Hundred Fourth Congress, First Session on S. 1136: A Bill to Control and Prevent Commercial Counterfeiting, and for Other Purposes […] (Serial No. J-104-49), Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, published 1997, →OCLC, page 33:",
"text": "We do work [...] to develop some strength and testing standards so that the industry can be assured that safe products are being produced. The person who is doing a knockoff could care less about that, and so they will just produce the product with virtually no field or laboratory testing and ship it out.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1999 June 23, Christopher Shays, Subcommittee Chairman, Combating Terrorism: Role of the National Guard Response Teams: Hearing before the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations of the Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives, One Hundred Sixth Congress, First Session […] (Serial No. 106-32), Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 64:",
"text": "As someone who lives 30 miles away as the crow flies [...] from New York City, I could care less that New York City or New York State has a sense of jurisdiction. I would want to know whoever is most capable would be able to step in without any jurisdictional battle.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2003, Donna Hill, If I Could (Dafina Books), New York, N.Y.: Kensington Publishing, →ISBN, page 58:",
"text": "Maybe it wasn't only time to move away from a job that was killing her spirit, but from people who could care less about her as a person, who saw her only as the good girl from next door, the one who would never do anything to upset anyone, who totally underestimated her.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To not care at all; to have no concern or interest; to be apathetic."
],
"id": "en-could_care_less-en-verb-S4NRMQd6",
"links": [
[
"care",
"care#Verb"
],
[
"concern",
"concern#Noun"
],
[
"interest",
"interest#Noun"
],
[
"apathetic",
"apathetic"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(US, nonstandard) To not care at all; to have no concern or interest; to be apathetic."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "couldn't care less"
},
{
"word": "not give a tinker's cuss"
},
{
"word": "not give a tinker's damn"
}
],
"tags": [
"US",
"nonstandard"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/kəd kɛə ˈlɛs/",
"tags": [
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/kəd kɛ(ə)ɹ ˈlɛs/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/-ke(ə)ɹ-/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
},
{
"audio": "En-us-could care less.mp3",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/En-us-could_care_less.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/ba/En-us-could_care_less.mp3/En-us-could_care_less.mp3.ogg"
}
],
"word": "could care less"
}
{
"etymology_text": "An alteration of couldn’t care less (which is first attested slightly earlier), either:\n* by deliberate irony, or\n* by hyponegation, perhaps influenced by forms such as “as if I could care less”, “no one could care less”, and “to know little (or nothing) and care less”.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "could have cared less",
"tags": [
"past",
"perfect"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "verb",
"3": "past perfect",
"4": "could have cared less"
},
"expansion": "could care less (past perfect could have cared less)",
"name": "head"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"American English",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nonstandard terms",
"English terms with quotations",
"English verbs",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1967, American Cooperation, Washington, D.C.: American Institute of Cooperation, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 235:",
"text": "Farmers knew that dead fish made plants go better. They could care less about why that happened. Scientists could not sleep until they found out why.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1995 October 10, Thomas McGann (witness), Trademark Counterfeiting: Hearing before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, One Hundred Fourth Congress, First Session on S. 1136: A Bill to Control and Prevent Commercial Counterfeiting, and for Other Purposes […] (Serial No. J-104-49), Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, published 1997, →OCLC, page 33:",
"text": "We do work [...] to develop some strength and testing standards so that the industry can be assured that safe products are being produced. The person who is doing a knockoff could care less about that, and so they will just produce the product with virtually no field or laboratory testing and ship it out.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1999 June 23, Christopher Shays, Subcommittee Chairman, Combating Terrorism: Role of the National Guard Response Teams: Hearing before the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations of the Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives, One Hundred Sixth Congress, First Session […] (Serial No. 106-32), Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 64:",
"text": "As someone who lives 30 miles away as the crow flies [...] from New York City, I could care less that New York City or New York State has a sense of jurisdiction. I would want to know whoever is most capable would be able to step in without any jurisdictional battle.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2003, Donna Hill, If I Could (Dafina Books), New York, N.Y.: Kensington Publishing, →ISBN, page 58:",
"text": "Maybe it wasn't only time to move away from a job that was killing her spirit, but from people who could care less about her as a person, who saw her only as the good girl from next door, the one who would never do anything to upset anyone, who totally underestimated her.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To not care at all; to have no concern or interest; to be apathetic."
],
"links": [
[
"care",
"care#Verb"
],
[
"concern",
"concern#Noun"
],
[
"interest",
"interest#Noun"
],
[
"apathetic",
"apathetic"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(US, nonstandard) To not care at all; to have no concern or interest; to be apathetic."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "couldn't care less"
},
{
"word": "not give a tinker's cuss"
},
{
"word": "not give a tinker's damn"
}
],
"tags": [
"US",
"nonstandard"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/kəd kɛə ˈlɛs/",
"tags": [
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/kəd kɛ(ə)ɹ ˈlɛs/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/-ke(ə)ɹ-/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
},
{
"audio": "En-us-could care less.mp3",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/En-us-could_care_less.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/ba/En-us-could_care_less.mp3/En-us-could_care_less.mp3.ogg"
}
],
"word": "could care less"
}
Download raw JSONL data for could care less meaning in All languages combined (4.0kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
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