between you and me
47
4.2
- idiom
- Informal
:
entre tú y yo
- The secret's between you and me.
- keep it between you and me
- just between you and me
- you know, between you and me
Examples
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Between you and me, Sam Metcalf only recently gave up leeches.
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It's between you and me.
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One condition: the deal remains between you and me.
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You know what the difference is between you and me?
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This is between you and me.
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The difference between you and me is that I know people lie and can live with it.
Blog text (25) -
Between you and me, she's going through some major boy issues.
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There won't be any awkwardness between you and me.
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The problem between you and me is that everything's lopsided and I don't want to depend on you anymore.
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Look, I need to keep this between you and me, know what I'm saying?
Synonyms
10
4.4
In a private way so no one else knows
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
between + you + and + me
The meaning is directly built from the constituents: 'between' plus 'you and me' denotes something confined to the two participants (a private space), so the intended sense of confidentiality is directly inferable from the literal composition. This prepositional construction and its pragmatic use to signal secrecy is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows the words should understand it.
Etymology
Between you and me, one simple image is two people leaning close and whispering so the words stay 'between' them. That's why people use it to say something is 'secret' or 'private'.