"could care less"

[Wilson Gray]

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
–––
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:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail 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
>> -----------------------
>> > 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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>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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