your words, not mine
- idiom
:
tus palabras, no las mías
- When accused of agreeing, she insisted, "Your words, not mine."
Examples
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"I think he's lazy—your words, not mine," she said quickly.
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I agree with you, but those are your words, not mine.
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"This plan is doomed to fail—your words, not mine, just to be clear," he replied.
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That's your words, not mine!
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"I think he's lazy—your words, not mine," she said, emphasizing she was quoting someone else.
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"This plan is doomed to fail—your words, not mine, just to clarify the source of the opinion," he replied.
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When asked if she agreed, she firmly stated, "Your words, not mine, I simply repeated what I heard."
Synonyms
710
1.6
To repeat someone else's exact words from a book, speech, or person
Something someone else says that you do not agree with
Repeat someone else's opinions without understanding them or adding your own
Surface Forms
Morphology
The overall meaning — distancing oneself from a statement and attributing it to the other person — is directly and compositionally derived from the parts: 'your words' (belonging to you) + 'not mine' (not belonging to me). This is a literal, common attributional construction found across many languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words would reasonably infer the intended sense.
Etymology
Your words, not mine is like holding up a note written by someone else and pointing at them to show the sentence belongs to that person. So people say it when they are 'repeating someone else's statement, not expressing their own opinion'.