to put words in someone's mouth
10
6.3
- idiom
:
poner palabras en la boca (a alguien)
- Now, please, stop putting words in my mouth.
- stop putting words in my mouth
- try putting words in my mouth
- want to put words in his mouth
Examples
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The prosecution is putting words in his mouth.
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But please do not misrepresent my position or put words in my mouth.
Blog text (4) -
Hey, hey, you put words in my mouth.
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Well, what you and others are doing is putting words in my mouth.
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So you can put words in my mouth behind my back?
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You are also putting words in my mouth that I never said.
Blog text (33) -
So please do not put words in my mouth.
Blog text (14) -
Stop trying to put words in my mouth, Ruby.
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You are putting words in my mouth; I never even mentioned the New Testament.
Blog text (30) -
Please don't put words in someone's mouth; that's not what they actually said.
Synonyms
71
6.9
Give a false story about someone or something to trick people
1
8.0
To claim someone said something they did not say
How Accurate
710
1.6
64
4.1
3
5.5
10
6.3
50
7.3
Surface Forms
Morphology
put + words + in + someone's + mouth
The phrase literally evokes placing utterances into someone’s mouth, so the idea of attributing words to another person is fairly directly built from the constituents and likely gives learners a clear general sense. However, the specific pragmatic sense of falsely claiming someone said something (misattribution or misrepresentation) relies on metaphorical and pragmatic inference rather than straightforward composition, so full comprehension may require prior exposure. Cross-linguistic parallels (e.g. Spanish poner palabras en la boca) increase recognizability but do not make it completely predictable for a B1 learner.
Etymology
Put words in someone's mouth comes from the simple picture of someone taking words and placing them into another person's mouth, so that person looks like they said those words. So it means 'to falsely claim that someone said something they did not actually say'.