More about receipts

Receipts, in the phrase show me the receipts, as evidenced in jarrett hill and Tre’vell Anderson’s new book, Historically Black Phrases, out now from Ten Speed Press from Penguin Random House:

PRONUNCIATION

Phonetic.

TRANSLATION

“Where is the proof?”

USAGE

A defiant dare meant to encourage the spoken-to to prove their allegation. If the speaker is the person implicated in said allegation, they likely believe there is no verifiable proof and therefore are willing to stick their neck out to boldly demand proof.

EXAMPLE

When Tia and Tamera said they’d gone to finish their homework with Roger after school, Lisa wasn’t buying it. “Show me some receipts,” she said, waiting for this allegedly completed homework to come out of their backpacks.

ORIGIN OF RECEIPTS

• Receipts originated in Black English and spread to the mainstream most likely in 2002, when singer Whitney Houston demanded proof of an accusation in an interview by saying, “I want to see the receipts.”
• The phrase morphed into show me the receipts in the late 2000s, and was used more generally in the context of celebrity scandals and gossip.
• The singular noun receipt was first recorded in 1350–1400 from Middle English receite, which came either from Old French recete or directly from Medieval Latin recepta “money received, receipt, recipe,” from Latin recipere “to receive.”

More about selcouth

• Selcouth is an archaic word that appeared in English before 900.
• Selcouth comes from the Old English word seldcūth, which means “seldom couth.”
• The couth part derives from an older meaning of couth, “known or acquainted with.”
• Literally, selcouth means “seldom known.”

EXAMPLES OF SELCOUTH

• It was very selcouth and unsettling to see the empty streets that night.
• Her voice had a selcouth lilt to it that indicated she might not feel comfortable.

More about debuff

• The buff part of debuff originally comes from buffalo, whose leather was used to polish metal in the 1800s.
• Buff became a verb by 1849, meaning “to polish or shine.”
• A century and a half later, buff was used to describe someone who was physically fit.
• Buff, “strong and muscular,” is what gamers had in mind in the mid-1990s when they began to buff up their characters in role-playing games.
• The opposite of buffing a player is debuffing them, which was first recorded in 2000–05.

EXAMPLES OF DEBUFF

• The mage cast a powerful spell to debuff the enemy, reducing their strength and making them easier to defeat.
• The potion she drank debuffed her opponent’s defense, giving her an advantage in the battle.