Why do Americans say they 'could care less'

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by 6charlong

And why do “flammable” and “inflammable” mean the same thing? Shouldn’t they be opposites?

Nope. The "in" in this case is not a "negative", but has pretty much the same meaning as the English word "in".

"Flammable" is from the Latin verb "flammare", which means "to set on fire".

"Inflammable" is from the closely related, but subtly different, verb, "inflammare", which is "in" + "flammare", meaning "to set a flame to something" - ie, the actual act of lighting a fire.

[HarryT]

OK - another question for our American friends. I've heard a number of Americans use the expression "my bad", with the apparent meaning "I have made a mistake". Why "my bad"? "Bad" is an adjective, not a noun; the phrase is grammatically meaningless .

[dreams]

Originally Posted by 6charlong

And why do “flammable” and “inflammable” mean the same thing? Shouldn’t they be opposites?

Originally Posted by HarryT

Nope. The "in" in this case is not a "negative", but has pretty much the same meaning as the English word "in".

"Flammable" is from the Latin verb "flammare", which means "to set on fire".

"Inflammable" is from the closely related, but subtly different, verb, "inflammare", which is "in" + "flammare", meaning "to set a flame to something" - ie, the actual act of lighting a fire.

To continue this.... http://www.write101.com/W.Tips215.htm

"If something is "flammable" it means it will burn readily ... right? So ... if it's "inflammable" that should mean it doesn't burn ... right?

Wrong. Both words mean the same.

Visitors to the Apostrophe Forum have been addressing this problem of flammable and inflammable materials. Richard Tinsley did some investigating and found the following satisfactory explanation at the Word Detective site: http://www.word-detective.com/120398.html

Blame it on Latin and its tricky prefixes. In the beginning, there was "inflammable," a perfectly nice English word based on the Latin "inflammare," meaning "to kindle," from "in" (in) plus "flamma" (flame). "Inflammable" became standard English in the 16th century. So far, so good.

Comes the 19th century, and some well-meaning soul dreamt up the word "flammable," basing it on a slightly different Latin word, "flammare," meaning "to set on fire." There was nothing terribly wrong with "flammable," but it never really caught on. After all, we already had "inflammable," so "flammable" pretty much died out in the 1800's.

"But wait," you say, "I saw 'flammable' just the other day." Indeed you did. "Flammable" came back, one of the few successful instances of social engineering of language.

The Latin prefix "in," while it sometimes means just "in" (as in "inflammable"), more often turns up in English words meaning "not" (as in "invisible" -- "not visible"). After World War Two, safety officials on both sides of the Atlantic decided that folks were too likely to see "inflammable" and decide that the word meant "fireproof," so various agencies set about encouraging the revival of "flammable" as a substitute. The campaign seems to have worked, and "inflammable" has all but disappeared.

That left what to call something that was not likely to burst into flames, but here the process of linguistic renovation was easier. "Non-flammable" is a nice, comforting word, and besides, it's far easier on the tongue than its now thankfully obsolete precursor, "non-inflammable."

The Oxford English Dictionary adds this usage note: Historically, flammable and inflammable mean the same thing. However, the presence of the prefix in- has misled many people into assuming that inflammable means "not flammable" or "noncombustible." The prefix -in in inflammable is not, however, the Latin negative prefix -in, which is related to the English -un and appears in such words as indecent and inglorious. Rather, this -in is an intensive prefix derived from the Latin preposition in. This prefix also appears in the word enflame. But many people are not aware of this derivation, and for clarity's sake it is advisable to use only flammable to give warnings."

[dreams]

Originally Posted by HarryT

OK - another question for our American friends. I've heard a number of Americans use the expression "my bad", with the apparent meaning "I have made a mistake". Why "my bad"? "Bad" is an adjective, not a noun; the phrase is grammatically meaningless .

I learned it from the movie, "Clueless". ("Valley Girl" language.) It was also known as street slang. (Two very opposite sides of society.)

The below is from...http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/my-bad.html

Meaning

My mistake - I'm to blame.

Origin

This slang term originated in about 1970. At that time, i.e. pre the widespread use of the Internet, slang terms often circulated at street level for many years before being adopted by anyone who felt inclined to write them down. That's clearly not the case any longer of course and any word or phrase that is widely known is dateable quite precisely via website logs.

The first citation in print is C. Wielgus and A. Wolff's, 'Back-in-your-face Guide to Pick-up Basketball', 1986:

"My bad, an expression of contrition uttered after making a bad pass or missing an opponent."

Shakespeare used the term with something like the current meaning, in his Sonnet 112:

Your love and pity doth the impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?

That's clearly just coincidence, and it's hardly surprising that such a fragmentary phrase would appear in a large body of work like Shakespeare's. It's also a world away from pick-up basketball, which is an informal street sport where players frequently call out to each other (trash talking), and is a well-known source of street lang.

clueless'My bad' came into widespread popular use in the mid to late-1990s in the USA via the 1995 movie “Clueless”. This starred Alicia Silverstone and contains what seems to have been the first use of the phrase in the mainstream media. The 1994 'Green revision pages' for the movie script has a scene with Alicia Silverstone's character learning to drive:

"Cher swerves - to avoid killing a person on a bicycle. Cher: Whoops, my bad."

[Stitchawl]

Originally Posted by HarryT

OK - another question for our American friends. I've heard a number of Americans use the expression "my bad", with the apparent meaning "I have made a mistake". Why "my bad"? "Bad" is an adjective, not a noun; the phrase is grammatically meaningless .

This comes from the gangsta rappers. Reversal of meanings as in 'I'm down with that' which actually means one is up/going along with it!

We have a wonderful history of reversals which is why we drive on the 'parkway' and park in the 'driveway.' Are you down with that?

Stitchawl

[HarryT]

Thanks to you both for the interesting explanations!

[Taylor514ce]

My personal crusade is to save the adverbs! I even wrote a company because of the text on their cereal box: "Why eat organic?".

[jinlo]

I've always wondered why Martians say "Grapzlok Menutian", but then they say "Spindaf wronk chermunkle" and I realize it's just friendly banter unrelated to e-books and mobile devices.

[slayda]

Originally Posted by Wetdogeared

irregardless...

Or, "I'll reiterate once again."

Doubly redundant

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by 6charlong

And why do “flammable” and “inflammable” mean the same thing? Shouldn’t they be opposites?

Interesting reading the follow-ups. A cognitive strategy I have recently noticed that I use is to assign some rational interpretation to anything that doesn't make sense. In this case, I'd noted the two words somewhere in my adolescence and had concluded that "inflammable" must mean not only "able to be ignited" but "prone to ignite explosively," due to the context in which I would see the term, compared to the usual context of "flammable." Thirty years later, I am finally corrected....

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

My personal crusade is to save the adverbs! I even wrote a company because of the text on their cereal box: "Why eat organic?".

A former president of the university where I work was quoted as saying "Think global, act local." Argh!

Originally Posted by jinlo

I've always wondered why Martians say "Grapzlok Menutian", but then they say "Spindaf wronk chermunkle" and I realize it's just friendly banter unrelated to e-books and mobile devices.

Hm. I see you're using the Sprrk phoneticization. I've always prefered the Fllt, myself, as I think it captures the flavinoids better. (I'll grant you that most humans can't distinguish them without special equipment, but I think it's important to preserve the linguistic features as accurately as possible, don't you?)

[RWood]

"Cheap at half the price" has always bothered me as the word "cheap" is a reference to the object -- its quality -- not its price. If something is cheap, it is cheap at any price. Cheaply made goods, those of low to poor quality, would fall apart and be unfit for service sooner than other goods without regard for the cost of producing the goods. An example would be some years ago when a US made car would be a cheap good even though it cost more to produce and sold for more than many higher quality non-US made cars.

As the Kinks sing in their song "Low Budget", "best of all, cheap is cheap."

[mogui]

Ha! Americans, specifically those from the United States, say, "could care less" for the same reason they, and their TV announcers refer to "events" as "incidences". I have lived there so I have fluency in that variant of English. Businesses are often promising "free gifts" for listening to a sales pitch. Maybe they wish to sell you some jew-ler-ee (jewelry), or maybe it is a re-leh-tor (realtor) hoping to interest you in some property. If you can tolerate the former president making nuke-you-lar (nuclear) policy, maybe you can also prolly (probably) accommodate a per-fession-al (one who has years and years of schooling) far-tog-ra-fur (one who makes fartographs). I actually got comf-ter-bull (comfortable) with those neologisms, though not to the point of using them in my own speech.

Languages change because usage changes. Remember that half the American population has an IQ of less than 100. Some linguistic shifts come from the shallow end of the gene pool too!

[krisk]

Originally Posted by mogui

Ha! Americans, specifically those from the United States, say, "could care less" for the same reason they, and their TV announcers refer to "events" as "incidences". I have lived there so I have fluency in that variant of English. Businesses are often promising "free gifts" for listening to a sales pitch. Maybe they wish to sell you some jew-ler-ee (jewelry), or maybe it is a re-leh-tor (realtor) hoping to interest you in some property. If you can tolerate the former president making nuke-you-lar (nuclear) policy, maybe you can also prolly (probably) accommodate a per-fession-al (one who has years and years of schooling) far-tog-ra-fur (one who makes fartographs). I actually got comf-ter-bull (comfortable) with those neologisms, though not to the point of using them in my own speech.

Languages change because usage changes. Remember that half the American population has an IQ of less than 100. Some linguistic shifts come from the shallow end of the gene pool too!

you cast a rather wide net, one that has many holes in it.

[mogui]

Originally Posted by krisk

you cast a rather wide net, one that has many holes in it.

A net without holes is like a fish without a bicycle

[RWood]

Originally Posted by mogui

Ha! Americans, specifically those from the United States, say, "could care less" for the same reason they, and their TV announcers refer to "events" as "incidences". I have lived there so I have fluency in that variant of English. Businesses are often promising "free gifts" for listening to a sales pitch. Maybe they wish to sell you some jew-ler-ee (jewelry), or maybe it is a re-leh-tor (realtor) hoping to interest you in some property. If you can tolerate the former president making nuke-you-lar (nuclear) policy, maybe you can also prolly (probably) accommodate a per-fession-al (one who has years and years of schooling) far-tog-ra-fur (one who makes fartographs). I actually got comf-ter-bull (comfortable) with those neologisms, though not to the point of using them in my own speech.

Languages change because usage changes. Remember that half the American population has an IQ of less than 100. Some linguistic shifts come from the shallow end of the gene pool too!

Welcome back, I haven't seen you in the forums for months. Of course one-half of the US population is below 100, it will always be so. I am just glad that the current 100 would have been a higher number a generation or two ago as the tests are revised at intervals to keep them normalized around 100.

Every country has their own unique statements and way of saying things. I am sure that you could (and I wish you would) share some from your experiences in China -- either from the translators of from the ex-pat community there.

I wish I could share some phrases I remember from the US community in eastern Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s or San Jose, Costa Rica in the mid 1980s; but, this is a family-friendly web site and such language has no place here. (Call if "self censorship.")