In response to a recent question about Donald Trump calling her “Crooked Hillary,” Hillary Clinton said, “He can say whatever he wants to say about me; I really could care less.”

Now I’m no William Safire or Edwin Newman,  or any other self-proclaimed guardian of proper grammar.  I’m as inclined to joyously split infinitives  as anyone else.  I also enjoy ending sentences with prepositions.    (Interestingly, I just literally ended a sentence with “a preposition.”  (And I just did it again.))  Yet I did not violate the precious rule — yet.  I’m sure there must be a rule against beginning and ending a sentence with “yet,” but I have not yet found it.)  In fact, I love the way that Winston Churchill purportedly  skewered the language police on the preposition proposition by illustrating the absurd contortions in which they would indulge just to avoid the deadly sentence-ending proposition:

“Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put!”

But it does drive me crazy to hear someone say the exact opposite of what they mean, without the slightest hint of irony or satire.  This is the problem with “I could care less.”      Often, the person saying it does so really slowly, “I. Could. Care. Less,” so as to provide emphasis and generate more impact –apparently not realizing that the only thing they are emphasizing was their own stupidity.

The only other common word or expression that comes close in terms of the percentage of times it is used to mean the exact opposite of what is intended is “literally.”  How often have you heard someone say something like, “I literally worked my tail off”?  Presumably, they do not have a tail as they are speaking to you, but did they ever literally have a tail, much less work it off?  Or “Wow, you’re literally on fire,” simply because someone is doing well at something (presumably not immolation).  An appropriate response may be, “I’m on fire?  I could be careless.”