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who are you and what have you done with [someone]
- idiom
- Informal
- He actually arrived on time today; who are you and what have you done with John?
Examples
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She volunteered to lead the meeting—who are you and what have you done with Emma?
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You did the dishes without being asked—who are you and what have you done with my son?
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You cleaned your room without any reminders—who are you and what have you done with my daughter?
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He is always so grumpy, but today he is smiling—who are you and what have you done with Mike?
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My brother finished his homework early for once—who are you and what have you done with him?
Synonyms
1
9.9
A joking reply that pretends not to know someone who messages you
An informal rude phrase said to show surprise or not believe something
To show you are surprised something happened
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
who + be + you + and + what + have + you + done + with + [someone]
The literal parts ('who are you' + 'what have you done with [someone]') clearly signal surprise and puzzlement, so a learner who knows the words can likely infer that something odd is happening. However, the conventionalized humorous implicature — that the person is behaving so differently it is as if they have been replaced — depends on pragmatic and cultural knowledge rather than strict compositional meaning, making the expression only partly predictable for a B1 learner.
Etymology
Who are you and what have you done with [someone] is a joking question that imagines the real person has been replaced by someone else. It pictures you asking 'who are you' and 'what have you done with [someone]' as if the person was taken away, so it shows 'surprise' that someone is acting very differently from usual.