care a button

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care a button (third-person singular simple present cares a button, present participle caring a button, simple past and past participle cared a button)

1. (idiomatic, dated, usually in a negative use) To care (at all).

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:care

   • 1596, Zachary Jones (translator), The Historie of George Castriot, surnamed Scanderbeg, King of Albanie by Marin Barleti, London: William Ponsonby, Book 5, p. 180,

     […] the filthy and foule desire of gaine preuailed with one of the garrison, a most wretched and desperate villaine of all men liuing to be abhorred: who being corrupted by the large and perilous offers of Ottoman, did not care a button for the safetie of his citizens, of his countrey, nor of his frendes or kinsfolkes […]

   • 1763, John Hall-Stevenson, A Pastoral Cordial, London: J. Hinxman, p. 19,

     If you are treated ill and put on,

     ’Tis natural to make a Fuss;

     To see it and not care a Button,

     Is just as natural for us.

   • 1843, Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave 1,

     Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge's dip. ¶ Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that.

   • 1922, Walter de la Mare, “Seaton’s Aunt” in Best Stories of Walter de la Mare, London: Faber & Faber, 1942, p. 86,

     You’re the only chap I care a button for […]

   • 1940, Alice Duer Miller, The White Cliffs, New York: Coward-McCann, p. 60,

     Twenty years since we sat on top

     Of the world, amusing ourselves and sneering

     At other manners and customs, jeering

     At other nations, living in clover—

     Not any more. That’s done and over.

     No one nowadays cares a button

     For the upper classes—they’re dead as mutton.