I need help, please... I have some problems to understand this phrase.
It is from my conversation with one man.
I said " I guess, you really don't like me" ( I know he did before, not sure about it now) and he replied " You know better than that..."
What could he possibly mean by that? What does it mean in other words? Thanks.
If I heard this phrase I would think that a person can mean several things. fivejedjon, do you find this phrase clear and accurate here? Isn't it two-faced?
I think that the phenomenon you are seeing is idiom. That sequence of words conveys a thought that cannot be discerned in the words themselves. That same thought would be expressed in another way in another language, but the thought is common to us all. If it were not, idiom would not work the way it does. The speaker was gently chiding her (?) for letting her insecurities cloud her outlook, telling her to look into her own heart for the answer which he was assuring her was that he did like her. (Sorry about the convoluted sentence, but it goes to illustrate the power of idiom. With it, a complex idea can be expressed in very few words, words that in and of themselves do not express it.)
Does it exist in a dictionary?