not to give a hoot
Meaning: Not to care at all.
Language: English
Literally: (Already vivid in English)
Example: “He doesn't give a hoot what the neighbors think of his purple house.”
Category: Daily Life
Origin: American: "hoot" had come to mean the tiniest amount by the late 19th century, and in 1912 a young Harry Truman wrote to his future wife that he did not "care a hoot" what she did with his letters.
Equivalents in other languages
- German: Das ist mir Wurst — literally: That is sausage to me
- Spanish: Importar un pepino — literally: To matter a cucumber
- French: Ça m'en touche une sans faire bouger l'autre — literally: It touches one of mine without moving the other
- Italian: farsene un baffo — literally: to make oneself a mustache of it
- French: N'en avoir cure — literally: To have no care of it
- French: S'en tamponner le coquillard — literally: To dab one's coquillard with it
- French: S'en moquer comme de l'an quarante — literally: To care about it as much as about the year forty
More idioms — Daily Life
- have a blast — To have a very good time.
- set alarm bells ringing — To make someone suspect that something is wrong.
- throw the baby out with the bathwater — To discard something valuable while getting rid of what is unwanted.
- the pot calling the kettle black — Said when someone criticizes another person for a fault they have themselves.
- keep one's cards close to one's chest — To keep one's plans or intentions secret.
- be all the rage — To be extremely fashionable or popular for a time.
More English idioms
- get back on one's feet — To recover after an illness or a setback.
- not sleep a wink — To not sleep at all.
- work oneself into a lather — To become very agitated, anxious or angry.
- avoid like the plague — To stay as far away as possible from someone or something.
- lay it on thick — To exaggerate, especially praise or flattery, far too much.
- stake one's life on it — To be absolutely certain that something is true.