Idiom idiom
do me a lemon
Meaning
Expresses disbelief.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“Do me a lemon, you really think I believe that story?”
“When he claimed he won the lottery twice in one week, I told him to do me a lemon.”
“She looked at me with utter skepticism and told me to do me a lemon after I suggested the project would be finished by morning.”
Origin
The expression originated as a Cockney rhyming slang variant of the phrase do me a favour. The term lemon functions as a truncated reference to lemon flavour, which supplies the rhyme for the final word of the original request.
Anchors to
Last updated August 10, 2026