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Originally Posted by Quexos
Only by extrapolation. The syntax being almost correct because the difference with the correct expression is just one word away (the word "not").But the expression is incorrect and if you condone it then you must condone mistakes in all modern branches of knowledge and soon 1+1 will equal 3 because it's not too far from the correct answer and people "understand" what was meant. But even though you can extrapolate from the wrong result, 1+1 will never equal 3 and it is as wrong as it can ever be.
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Language is not mathematics. The analogy doesn't work, if you said "1+1=3",
no one would understand what you meant. On the other hand, they would understand if you said "I could care less" and meant it to be synonymous "I couldn't care less."
Again, I don't use "I could care less", I'm just not joining a crusade against it. I don't need to condone anything.
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I won't pretend to squash this "idiom" anymore than I would pretend to squash ignorance from the surface of the earth.
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An idiom is "A group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words". Clearly, that's what "I could care less" is. If you said "I could care less" and meant that you were capable of having less concern than you have now, it would only cause people do be confused.