Word.ws English Dictionary

who knew

who knew phrase: expressing surprise, or ironic lack of surprise, upon learning something.

Phrase

who knew?

  1. Expressing surprise, or ironic lack of surprise, upon learning something.
    • […] on at least a dozen occasions, the Supreme Court itself […] had spent the last three decades scrutinizing and parsing, expanding and restricting and harmonizing and distinguishing a decision that had been null and void all along. Who knew!1999, The New York Times Biographical Service, volume 30, page 1518
    • And over the course of a couple of days, albeit in a disjointed and non-linear manner, I had basically watched all of What Women Want. It’s a good film! Sarah Paulson is in it! Who knew?2023 October 3, Stuart Heritage, “Mean Girls in 23 parts: the rise of movies and shows watched on TikTok”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Questions about who knew

What does who knew mean?
Who knew means expressing surprise, or ironic lack of surprise, upon learning something.
What part of speech is who knew?
Who knew is a phrase.

Words near who knew in the dictionary

  1. who do you think you are
  2. who goes there
  3. who hurt you
  4. who keeps company with the wolf will learn to howl
  5. who keeps company with wolves, will learn to howl
  6. who knew
  7. who knows
  8. who pays the piper calls the tune
  9. who put a quarter in you
  10. who shot John
  11. who so

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: who knew (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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