Rhetorical question colloquial childish assertion that an insult made by the party to whom the phrase is directed is actually true of that party and not of the person using the phrase usually considered to be a playground taunt 1984 mccalls volume 111 page 62 i know you are but what am i jeannie would say out loud whenever i mouthed a name . Definition of i know you are but what am i in the idioms dictionary i know you are but what am i phrase what does i know you are but what am i expression mean definitions by the largest idiom dictionary i know you are but what am i idioms by the free dictionary. Before you know it theyll run over you and drag you down the street to your death and they wont even have felt the bump she neednt have worried about me at the playground all i did was sit in one spot on a bench and count down the seconds before i could reasonably return home and claim that i had played on the teeter totter with . I was a kid in the 60s this phrase was not used by older sophisticated persons it was simply a juvenile response to juvenile name calling some dumb kid would say youre stupid the simple and quick response would be i know you are but what am i sometimes probably when first used a good come back to one who was truly stupid because it confounds them confuses them