"can do so much"

[Wilson Gray]

Was there any conclusion arrived at as to the (historical) origin of
"I could care less"? I first heard it used in the Army in the late
'50's. Neither I nor any other of the 400 or so recruits in my
training company had ever heard it before - the phrase engendered much
discussion in the barracks. Yet, among seasoned soldiers (BTW, has
anybody else noticed that, on the TV show, NCIS, marines are almost
always referred to as "soldiers"?), "I could care less" was already
used as routinely as "fuckinay  shitcan  buttcan  stockade one's bunk
latrine  (un-)ass  KP  personal weapon  bitch box (a form of outdoor
pulpit at Fort Leonard Wood; a barracks intercom, elsewhere)" and
other examples of military jargon.

-Wilson
–––
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 Sat, May 23, 2009 at 12:12 PM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "can do so much"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I'm sure there's been discussion before of "I could care less,"
> meaning the same as "I couldn't care less." Â But I don't recognize
> "can do so much" as the same sort of thing.
>
> Herb
>
> On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 8:34 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
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>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
>> Subject: Â  Â  Â "can do so much"
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Zalmay Khalizad (who has served as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq,
>> Afghanistan, and the UN), speaking on the radio program It's Your
>> World (a program of the World Affairs Council of Northern California),
>> said "The military can do so much", clearly meaning, in the context,
>> 'the military can do only so much' (i.e., not everything, or not a
>> lot, while "the military can do so much" otherwise conveys 'the
>> military can do a lot').
>>
>> i haven't found other examples that work this way, but it's not easy
>> to search for them. it's entirely possible that Khalizad's sentence
>> was a simple speech error, an inadvertent omission of "only", and it
>> might be relevant that English is not Khalizad's native language
>> (Persian is).
>>
>> anyone recall other examples of this sort?
>>
>> arnold
>>
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