Question: My boss has a catchphrase, “I’ll tell you what,” and it’s driving me nuts. Is this something new? Where does it come from?
Answer: No, it’s not something new. In fact, the usage dates back to the 1500s and can be seen in the works of many respected writers.
When the expression first appeared, it was “used to introduce (and give some emphasis to) an observation or comment,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
The OED says “(I, I’ll, I will) tell you what” here has the sense of “I will tell you something; I will tell you what is relevant or pertinent.” It describes the usage as colloquial.
The dictionary’s earliest citation is from a British response, from around 1565, to a Roman Catholic appeal for Queen Elizabeth I to accept papal authority:
“As for Diuynitie, I wyll tell you what. it is so handled of .ii. men, in .ii. bookes, within these .ii. yeres, that better it had bene the gospel had neuer peped out.”
(From A Sight of the Portugall Pearle, Abraham Hartwell’s English translation of Britain’s Latin response, by Walter Haddon, to a Latin epistle by Jerónimo Osório, Bishop of Faro, Portugal.)
The next OED citation, which we’ve expanded here, is from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2, a history play believed written in the late 1590s:
“My lord, Ile tell you what, If my yong Lord your sonne, haue not the day, for Vpon mine honor for a silken point, Ile giue my Barony, neuer talke of it.”
And here’s an Oxford example from Tennyson’s Harold (1877), a play about Harold II, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England: “I tell thee what, my child; Thou hast misread this merry dream of thine.”
In the 18th century, the dictionary says, the expression also came to be “used to introduce a suggestion or proposal: I will tell you what is to be done, what we might do, etc.”
The earliest OED citation for the new sense is from The Rehearsal: or, Bays in Petticoats, an 1753 comedy by “Mrs. [Catherine] Clive,” the English musical comedy star Kitty Clive:
“Oh, I’ll tell you what; let’s set Odelove upon her to enquire into the Plot of her Play.” The Rehearsal features Mrs. Hazard, a female playwright. (The noun “bay” was an old variant of “boy.”)
And here’s an expanded OED example from Robert Browning’s The Inn Album (1875): “Whereon how artlessly the happy flash / Followed, by inspiration! ‘Tell you what— / Let’s turn their flank, try things on t’other side!’ ”
Finally, here’s a citation from Of Human Bondage, a 1915 novel by W. Somerset Maugham: “I tell you what, I’ll try and come over to Paris again one of these days and I’ll look you up.”
Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation. And check out our books about the English language and more.
