If You Know What I Mean - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): If You Get My Drift; You Know What I Mean

"Your wife. Is she a... a goer? Eh? Know what I mean?"

—Arthur Nudge, Monty Pythons Flying Circus

"Now who wants to go swimming in my pool? And by pool, I mean bathtub. And by swimming, I mean SEX!"

— JFK, Clone High

Subversion of the Double Entendre. Classically, a Double Entendre is used because the people who shouldn't be exposed to the content won't even notice it's there. If You Know What I Mean is a follow-up to a Double Entendre used to ensure that the audience "gets" that it's there.

This can either be because the writer thinks that the audience is very stupid, or because the character is.

Typical phrases used this way include "That's what she said!" (very British variant - "...as the actress said to the bishop," apparently the punchline of a joke long since lost to the mists of time), "Hee hee, you said '<insert double entendre here>'," and, of course, "If you know what I mean," sometimes plus "-and I think you do." British viewers and Monty Python fans may know this best as "Wink-wink nudge-nudge say no more." Air Force personnel (at least in the U.S. Air Force and -perhaps to a lesser extent- the Canadian Air Force) will probably also be very familiar with the use of "so to speak" in this context.

Note that the implication in question need not be sexual. In particular, "so to speak" is often used in official government contexts.

See also Dont Explain The Joke. Has a distinct familiarity with Does This Remind You Of Anything

If the person being talked to doesn't know what you mean, it becomes Entendre Failure.