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got news for you

got news for you

11 8.2
To tell someone surprising or important news, often with irony
  • idiom
  • Informal
translation icon : contarte algo
  • Have I got news for you!
  • Hey, I got news for you
  • Well, I got news for you
  • got news for you, pal

Examples

Synonyms

guess what
vsgot news for you
  • Informal
91 4.9

A phrase you say before telling surprising news

is used to state news with emphasis or ironic tone instead
news for you
vsgot news for you
  • Informal
34 5.5

To tell someone something surprising that may change what they expect

is more likely to add emphasis or irony when introducing information
for your information
vsgot news for you
16 3.4

You use it when telling someone something they may not know, often politely or to show they were wrong

is aimed at surprising or stressing information, often ironically
newsflash
vsgot news for you
  • Literature
11 3.1

A short, sudden announcement about important breaking news

is a conversational introduction that adds surprise or ironic emphasis

Antonyms

To not tell anyone private information

Surface Forms

Morphology

get + news + for + you

The core meaning 'I have information for you' is directly and compositionally derivable from 'got' (have/possess) + 'news' (information) + 'for you' (recipient), a straightforward possession/recipient construction that is cross-linguistically common. While pragmatic flavours (surprise, emphasis, or irony) may require more discourse exposure, the basic propositional meaning would be clear to a B1 learner who knows the constituent words.

Etymology

Got news for you may come from the simple image of someone stopping you to hand over a note or shout that they have news for you, ready to change what you thought. That's why we use got news for you to introduce something 'surprising' or to say it with a sharp, 'ironic' tone.