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I kid you not, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
English
Etymology
Earliest known use is from November 3, 1943 on The Centenary Conglomerate.[1]
A print reference of the phrase appeared in 1948 in the International Stereotypers' and Electrotypers' Union Journal, Volume 43:
Boy!, Oh Boy! I said I asked for a headache when I volunteered for this job, and I kid you not when I repeat it.
It next appeared as a phrase spoken by Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg in Herman Wouk's 1951 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Caine Mutiny":
That's the Navy for you. Pass the buck and get a receipt. Act at discretion, hey? Well that's exactly what I'm going to do, and I kid you not.
It was later popularized by Jack Paar, host of The Tonight Show from 1957 to 1962, who used this as his signature phrase. It humorously combines the colloquial verb kid with the archaic negation through not without do-support.
Phrase
I kid you not
- (colloquial) Used to insist that one is telling the truth.
2011, Jonathan Marc Sherman, Knickerbocker, page 25:...I leaf through the stack of magazines they've got, and one of them — I kid you not — one of them is a Naughty Nurses magazine.
Translations
References
- ^ Lee Huckabay (1943 November 3) “Letters to the Editor”, in The Centenary Conglomerate, volume 38, number 3, Shreveport, Louisiana, page 2: “LEROY SCOTT is doing all the good down here. I kid you not. Altho most teachers have plenty of friends, Leroy has made his on his own, and not because he is a Physics Prof.”
Further reading