Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: You bet!

You bet! popped out of my mouth in enthusiastic agreement to something-or-other a few days ago. That set me to wondering when the phrase first arose, and if it had anything to do with gambling and so on. So, you guess: did I then start researching the phrase?

You bet!

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Here is what Dictionary.com has to say:

The slang bet appears to come from the everyday word bet, “a wager” or “to risk something of value.” By the 1850s, we were saying You bet! as an affirmative exclamation with the sense of “Indeed!” This expression has the underlying notion of You can bet that it is so or That’s a bet.

True West Magazine has a nice little article about this phrase, and Grammarphobia, which dives into the very colloquial You betcha indicates that You bet popped up in the U.S. and U.K. about the same time, providing "first use" citations from 1857 for both locations:

...The first British citation is from the novel Tom Brown’s School Days (1857), by Thomas Hughes: “What a bore that he’s got a study in this passage! Don’t you hear them now at supper in his den? Brandy punch going, I’ll bet.” ...  And here’s the earliest American citation: “I saw all the ‘boys,’ and distributed to them the papers and ‘you bet,’ they were in great demand” (from the Nov. 22, 1857, issue of the Phoenix, a short-lived newspaper in Sacramento)...

Grammarphobia goes on to list different U.S.-invented versions involving bet that popped up in the same general timeframe, such as “bet your life” (1852), “bet your old boots” (1856), and “bet his bottom dollar” (1866).

Do I find all these etymological details fascinating?

You bet!

In fact, you can bet your (old or new) boots!
Image by Pexels from Pixabay