Phrase-Meaning – Is “I Could Not Thank You Enough” Just the Past Tense of “I Cannot Thank You Enough”?

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My quick Google search for "I cannot thank you enough." returned a lot more results than for "I could not thank you enough."

  • I cannot thank you enough. (6,030,000 results)
  • I could not thank you enough. (448,000 results)

My questions are:

  1. Is "I could not thank you enough." just the past tense of "I cannot thank you enough."?
  2. If the answer for the above is No, then when do you use "I could not thank you enough." rather than "I cannot thank you enough."?

Best Answer

Could (like would) has two different uses.

  1. It functions as the past of can.

He said "I can't thank you enough" -> He said he couldn't thank me enough.

  1. It is a modal in its own right, with the sense of possibility (not ability, like can). In this sense, it is often in conditionals, and counterfactuals.

So

I couldn't thank you enough (when you said that).

with past meaning, is a straightforward past tense of I can't thank you enough.

With present meaning, it would probably be interpreted as something like

(Even if I thanked you all day) I couldn't thank you enough.

In that sense it sounds very effusive and over the top, and is much less common than "I can't thank you enough".

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