Word.ws English Dictionary

you know what I mean

you know what I mean phrase: you are familiar with the situation I am describing; used to establish common ground with the interlocutor.

Phrase

you know what I mean?

  1. (colloquial) You are familiar with the situation I am describing; used to establish common ground with the interlocutor
    • I think there's a value to having a reverence for something bigger than yourself, you know: "There's something out there." Sure, you know what I mean?2011, Phil Zuckerman, “Mother Was An Exorcist” (chapter 1), in Faith No More, page 31
    • Like when you've sung along with a song a thousand times but you know it so well that the words don't even mean anything anymore. They're just bits of air coming out of your mouth. You know what I mean?2001, Susan Perabo, The Broken Places, page 141

Examples of you know what I mean in a sentence

  • I'm trying not to stare down there / While she talks about her tough time / Girl of your dreams / You know what I mean2020, The 1975, “If You're Too Shy (Let Me Know)”, in Notes on a Conditional Form, track 16:
  • I mean, Psalm 95 was a huge help, but you know what I mean 🙂2023 November 16, @cliffduren, Twitter:

Questions about you know what I mean

What does you know what I mean mean?
You know what I mean means you are familiar with the situation I am describing; used to establish common ground with the interlocutor.
How do you use you know what I mean in a sentence?
I'm trying not to stare down there / While she talks about her tough time / Girl of your dreams / You know what I mean
What part of speech is you know what I mean?
You know what I mean is a phrase.

Words near you know what I mean in the dictionary

  1. you know
  2. you know it
  3. you know nothing, Jon Snow
  4. you know something
  5. you know what
  6. you know what I mean
  7. you know what I'm saying
  8. you know what they say
  9. you knows it
  10. you learn something new every day
  11. you lot

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: you know what I mean (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-you_know_what_I_mean.ogg.

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