>> Hi. Welcome to Ask the Editor.
I'm Kory Stamper, an associate
editor at Merriam-Webster.
It's time for a new video, and I
could care less or couldn't care less.
No, I could care less.
Don't worry.
I'm excited for a new video.
So let's break down the logic of could care
less and couldn't care less for a moment.
If you could care less, then you already
care some because you could care less.
And if you couldn't care less, you don't care.
There's nowhere to go.
So why do people confuse them?
According to our latest research, could
care less seems to be the earlier phrase,
and its earliest use from an 1867 serial novel
sets the groundwork for future confusion.
The sentence there reads,
"There is no one in the world
who could care less for that than I do."
Parsing less with the subject no one
requires a little bit of thought.
The writer here is actually saying that the
character in question doesn't care at all
for whatever is being discussed
even though that goes
against the logic we just
laid out for could care less.
Well, what about couldn't care less?
Couldn't care less shows up about 20 years
later in another novel where a character says,
"Ralph couldn't care less for us
if he wanted to ever so much."
Now stripped from its context, it sounds like
Ralph already doesn't care about those people.
But in context, it's clear that the character
who is speaking is countering that argument.
Ralph cares for these people a ton.
Even if he wanted to care less
about them, he's not able.
He literally could not care less for them.
Uses like these are part of the
reason why there's so much confusion
around could care less and couldn't care less.
So what should you do?
The logical phrase to mean you
don't care is couldn't care less,
and we see that phrase more
in written edited prose.
But if you need a flow chart to figure
out if you should use couldn't care less
or could care less, maybe
just avoid the whole shebang
and say plainly that you just don't care.
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