Where did the phrase I dont give a rats ass come from? The OED gives the first citation of the phrase from Leon Uris, "Battle Cry" in 1953 (but if it appeared in print then, it would certainly have been around for a while before that They also give a possibly related phrase "don't give a dead rat" from Mark Twain, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1884) COHA (Corpus of Historical American English) has its first instance in 1967 If you're