Word.ws English Dictionary

tell it to the marines

tell it to the marines phrase: i do not believe what you said.

tell it to the marines: i do not believe what you said
Image: Jean Shwartz, Al Jolson, Harrold Attridge, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Phrase

tell it to the marines

  1. (colloquial, idiomatic) I do not believe what you said.
    • William. No palaver! tell it to the marines. What, tacking and double tacking! Come to what you want to say at once.1829, Douglas Jerrold, Act I, Scene ?
    • I don’t believe the story you have been telling me, either, and think it far more likely that you are hiding from justice on account of some devil’s work you have been engaged in. Bah! Tell your story to the marines!1868 February, Caroline M. Sawyer, “The Jester of Durano; Or, The Times of Old”, in The Ladies’ Repository, a Universalist Monthly Magazine for the Home Circle, volume XXXIX, Boston, Mass.: The...

tell it to the marines meaning in Vietnamese

tell it to the marines in Vietnamese

expression of disbelief
nói cho ma nó nghe

Synonyms of tell it to the marines

Origin of tell it to the marines

Unknown, with many apocryphal suggestions.

Questions about tell it to the marines

What does tell it to the marines mean?
Tell it to the marines means i do not believe what you said.
What is tell it to the marines in Vietnamese?
Tell it to the marines in Vietnamese is nói cho ma nó nghe. See Tell it to the marines meaning in Vietnamese.
What part of speech is tell it to the marines?
Tell it to the marines is a phrase.

Words near tell it to the marines in the dictionary

  1. tell fortunes
  2. tell it like it is
  3. tell it to Sweeney
  4. tell it to the hand
  5. tell it to the judge
  6. tell it to the marines
  7. tell its own story
  8. tell its own tale
  9. Tell Jadid
  10. tell me about it
  11. tell me another one

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tell it to the marines (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-tell it to the marines.ogg.

Cite this entry: “tell it to the marines.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tell_it_to_the_marines. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.