care a pin

present singular third person cares a pin · participle present caring a pin · participle past cared a pin · past cared a pin

1. datedinformalTo care for something, to have interest or concern for something or someone.

   "Bother them all! I don't care a pin about them."

   1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula, Chartwell Books, published 2024, →ISBN, page 102

   3 more examples

   It's such a ridiculous position for a man to have to assume—all that sighing and love-song making about a woman you don't really care a pin for.

   1892, Grant Allen, The Duchess of Powysland, Chatto & Windus, pages 139–140

   Management has been lazy, too—management has found it easier to hire an additional five hundred men than to so improve its methods that one hundred men of the old force could be released to other work. The public was paying, and business was booming, and management didn't care a pin.

   1922, Henry Ford, Samuel Crowther, My Life and Work, Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., →OCLC, page 259

   How did people manage in London? No one to ask, no signposts, no one who cared a pin whether you got to St Pancras or not.

   1953, Alison Lyle, Hazardous Fortune, Staples Press, page 129

   Synonyms: becare, bother, care, concern oneself, heed, mind, reck, trouble oneself