Word.ws English Dictionary

I kid you not

I kid you not phrase: used to insist that one is telling the truth.

Phrase

I kid you not

  1. (colloquial) Used to insist that one is telling the truth.
    • ...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.2011, Jonathan Marc Sherman, Knickerbocker, page 25

Forms of I kid you not

alternative form (vulgar)I shit you not
alternative form (vulgar)I fuck you not

Origin of I kid you not

Earliest known use is from November 3, 1943 on The Centenary Conglomerate. 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. Compare believe you me.

Questions about I kid you not

What does I kid you not mean?
I kid you not means used to insist that one is telling the truth.
What part of speech is I kid you not?
I kid you not is a phrase.

Words near I kid you not in the dictionary

  1. I hear you say
  2. I hope I may be shot
  3. I hope she sees this
  4. I hope you're happy
  5. I just work here
  6. I kid you not
  7. I kill you later
  8. I kill you laters
  9. I know
  10. I know it
  11. I know it when I see it

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: I kid you not (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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