I kid you not

English Alternative forms en I shit you not vulgar en I fuck you not vulgar Etymology Earliest known use is from November 3, 1943 on The Centenary Conglomerate.en 1943-11-03 Lee Huckabay Letters to the Editor The Centenary Conglomerate Shreveport, Louisiana 38 3 2 https://archive.org/details/centenaryconglomerate19431944/page/n9/mode/2up?q=%22i+kid+you+not%22 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. 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 en kid with the archaic negation through en not without en do-support. Compare believe you me. Phrase phr en colloquial Used to insist that one is telling the truth. en 2011 Jonathan Marc Sherman Knickerbocker 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 Finnish: fi en(kä) narraa, fi en(kä) petkuta, fi en(kä) puijaa, fi en(kä) juksaa French: fr ce n'est pas une blague German: de ich schwör's dir, slang de kein Scheiß Polish: pl nie żartuję Spanish: es no bromeo, es no es broma References Further reading en Chelsey Parrott-Sheffer Jack Paar Encyclopædia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jack-Paar January 29, 2008 July 9, 2019