Green’s Dictionary of Slang

not give a rat’s ass v.

to not care at all.

1961		(con. early 1950s) J. Peacock Valhalla 169: I don’t give a large rat’s ass.
1974		P. Gent North Dallas Forty 208: You’ll find nobody gives a fat rat’s ass who you were or how many zig outs you can run.
1976		P. Conroy Great Santini (1977) 255: I have never once in my life given a rat’s fart that I never saw a passenger pigeon.
1978		J. Webb Fields of Fire (1980) 144: As long as he’s looking good to the Man, he couldn’t give a rat’s ass how many people are bleeding.
1981		J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 169: When you got the moolah these Hebes got, who gives a rat’s ass for a few chickenshit million a year?
1987		(con. c.1967) J. Ferrandino Firefight 157: Like who gives a fat rat’s ass. You got it.
1992		R.G. Barrett White Shoes 230: I don’t give a rodent’s.
1993		C. Hiaasen Strip Tease 30: He asked why a bigshot congressman’s office should give a rat’s ass about who hangs out at a nudie joint.
1997		Mad mag. Sept. 47: Memo to The Veteran. No one gives a rat’s ass!
1998		R.G. Barrett Goodoo Goodoo 231: I wonder how she is today? Not that I give a rat’s arse.
1999		Indep. Rev. 11 Sept. 20: By the third bottle, they don’t give a rat’s arse if it’s got a widget in it.
2002		J. Lerner You Got Nothing Coming 83: You know what, Kansas? I really don’t give a rat’s fuck for what your precious woods think. As a matter of fact, fuck them.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 144: not give a rat’s arse Total indifference.
2004		T. Winton ‘Big World’ in Turning (2005) 5: He couldn’t give a rat’s ring.
2005		C. Hindrum in Tasmanian Times 4 Feb. 🌐 Most of the Anzacs are dead, so they won’t give a rat’s arse.
2007		UGK ‘Quit Hatin’ The South’ 🎵 As long as the beat knock and the lyrics hot, son / I can give a rat’s ass where a rapper is from.
2008		Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) 22 July 🌐 Sorry Sweetpea, I don’t give rat, you can call me all the kak names in the world.
2009		T. Black Gutted 6: Whoever dumped him here wasn’t giving a rat’s hump who found him.
2012		J. Robinson Gospel of the Game 3: I don’t give a rat’s ass about the freezing snow [...] or your menstrual flow.
2015		N. Cummins Tales of the Honey Badger [ebook] They do it in Sydney at the Mardi Gras and no one gives a rats.
2019		S.M. Jones Lives Laid Away [ebook] ‘I [...] don’t really give a rat’s skanky ass what your tin star says’.
2021		P. Papathanasiou Stoning 121: ‘We don’t give a toss about the city [and] they don’t give a rat’s arse about us’.