"could care less"

[Bill Palmer]

but never used interchangeably by Marines.

Bill Palmer

----- Original Message -----
From: "Wilson Gray" <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2009 5:36 PM
Subject: Re: "could care less"


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "could care less"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Yeah, I do remember the discussion WRT "marine" vs. "soldier" =
> "marine." It seems to me that the conclusion was that only a person
> who wouldn't have the sense to capitalize "Marine" in any of its
> military uses, instead of merely as part of the phrase, "_Marine
> Corps_" / "_Marine Corp_," would be dumb enough to refer to a marine
> as a "soldier." But, as its fans know, NCIS features a group commanded
> by an ex-jarhead and whose military characters are 99.44% marines.
> Nevertheless, "marine" and "soldier" are used pretty much
> interchangeably, at least by the show's writers and actors.
>
> -Wilson
> â?"â?"â?"
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
> -Mark Twain
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 5:02 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
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>> header -----------------------
>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "could care less"
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Some of the confusion about "brigs" and "stockades," along with "DIs" and
>> "drill sergeants" and some similar items must come from the mere
>> existence
>> of the Marine Corps as a kind of halfway point between navy and army
>> patoises.
>>
>> Whether a Marine "is" a soldier has been discussed here before. Â If I
>> neglected to cite Bill Clinton then, I'll do it now: "It depends on what
>> yo=
>> u
>> mean by 'is.'"
>>
>> JL
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 2:45 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>>> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "could care less"
>>>
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
>> ------
>>>
>>> FWIW, the first person that I ever heard use "I could care less,"
>>> after I had been in training perhaps four hours, was our black
>>> Puerto-Rican barracks sergeant, who had a *very* thick accent. I
>>> thought first that he merely lacked sufficient command of English to
>>> realize that he had misspoken. But, within a day or so, it became
>>> clear that *all* members of the cadre used the phrase minus the
>>> negation hundreds of times a day each. By contrast, the phrase
>>> practically doesn't occur "on civvy street" (AFAICR, this was a
>>> WWII-ish expression, already obsolete by the time of my time) any more
>>> often than Army "stockade" is correctly used in place of Navy "brig."
>>> I once saw a reference in the NYT to the "brig" at Fort Leavenworth.
>>> Would the NYT refer to Broadway as "Hollywood Boulevard"?!
>>>
>>> Well, "brig" is at least an improvement over the once *very* popular
>>> "guardhouse." Until I was actually on guard duty for the first time -
>>> in the middle of a thunderstorm, scared shitless that my individual
>>> weapon, muzzle pointed skyward at right shoulder, arms! would call
>>> down the lightning from the clouds - I had no idea that a "guardhouse"
>>> was literally a structure in which guards were housed - when not
>>> actively engaged in taking charge of their posts and and all other
>>> military property in view - and not a military jail or prison, for
>>> which "stockade" is the proper term in military jargon.
>>>
>>> -Wilson
>>> =96=96=96
>>> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
>>> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>>> -----
>>> -Mark Twain
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 11:36 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu>
>>> wrote:
>>> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>>> > Sender: =C2 Â =C2 Â =C2 Â American Dialect Society
>>> > <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU=
>>>
>>> > Poster: =C2 Â =C2 Â =C2 Â Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
>>> > Subject: =C2 Â =C2 Â =C2 Re: "could care less"
>>> >
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
>> ------
>>> >
>>> > On May 24, 2009, at 8:04 AM, i wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> Wilson's reports having first heard it used in the Army in the late
>>> >> '50s, and also that none of the recruits in his training company had
>>> >> heard it before (so that there was much discussion about in the
>>> >> barracks). =C2 so it was new *for them* (though it became routine
>>> >> "military jargon" for them). =C2 but of course others were using
>>> >> it --
>>> >> after all, the uses they first heard came from *somewhere*.
>>> >
>>> > this is a partial mis-report (i should never rely on my memory).
>>> > wilson said it was new to *the recruits*, but that for *seasoned
>>> > soldiers*, it was routinely used as "military jargon".
>>> >
>>> > arnold
>>> >
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>>> >
>>>
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>>
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