what, me worry
- idiom
- Archaic
:
¿yo preocuparme?
- I have a big exam tomorrow, but what, me worry?
Examples
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Whenever things go wrong at work, he just shrugs and says, what, me worry?
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When the storm hit, he just laughed and said, what, me worry!
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She missed the deadline but responded to her boss with a playful, what, me worry?
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The team's captain smiled before the tough match and joked, what, me worry?
-
Whenever things go wrong at work, he just shrugs and says, what, me worry?
-
The team's captain smiled before the tough match and joked, what, me worry?
-
She missed the deadline but responded to her boss with a playful, what, me worry?
Synonyms
4
9.9
A short informal word people say to show they do not care
Tell someone not to worry about something
Antonyms
How Worried
- Informal
2
6.6
- Archaic
Surface Forms
Morphology
what, + me + worry
The individual words (what, me, worry) are basic and give learners a strong clue that the phrase concerns the speaker and worrying, but the elliptical, sarcastic rhetorical form ('What, me worry?') conveys an ironic lack of concern that is not fully predictable from the literal words alone. The fixed, idiomatic phrasing and pragmatic/intonational meaning make the expression partially but not wholly transparent to a B1 learner without prior exposure.
Etymology
What, me worry comes from the American comic magazine Mad, where the silly, gap-toothed cartoon Alfred E. Neuman always wore a grin and used the line as a joke. Because the character looked happy and relaxed when he said what, me worry, the phrase now means 'not worried' or 'carefree'.