I was asked, "would you care to grab coffee sometime?" and didn't know how to correctly respond to it. Obviously I could respond with a "yes, sounds great" or a "no, thanks", but what would a parallel complete response look like? Here are some attempts at the response in the affirmative:
- "Yes, I would care."
- "Yes, I would care to."
- "Yes, I would care to do so."
All sound rather awkward, and I'm not sure they're in the affirmative.
It's possible the "would you care to" question is similar in construction to "would you mind"–for example "would you mind passing the salt?" In that case, "no I wouldn't mind" is the correct affirmative because the question is essentially asking, "if you passed the salt, would you mind that?" Given that, perhaps this is the correct response in the affirmative:
- "No, I wouldn't care."
Here the implied meaning of the question would be "If we grabbed coffee sometime, would you care?"
I've looked into the etymology of the construction would + <subject> + care + <verb in the infinitive> and wasn't able to find anything. I had hoped the etymology would provide a clue as what the correct response construction would be.
I'd greatly appreciate answers that are able to include etymological reasoning.
Best Answer
The problem here is not the response, but the phrase "would you care to..." Like "I could care less", it actually makes no sense taken literally, so it is best to treat it as an idiomatic phrase, and it is sometimes listed as such. That being the case, trying to make a parallel response including care is doomed to failure.
Treat it as "would you like to..."