Etymology From quote + unquote, a spoken equivalent of air quotes, used to express satire, sarcasm, irony or euphemism, analogous to scare quotes in print.
1
Idiomatic Emphasizes the following (or sometimes preceding) word or phrase for irony, or marks it as not the normal sense of the term.
Maybe you should ask your quote unquote friend what happened to the money.
`We're a young quote-unquote club. [...] In time, it will become a club.'1997 August 18, New York, page 38:
2 more examples
“Brandishing weapons and leaning into gun culture is viewed as revolutionary, and by revolutionary I mean, in their minds, the most virtuous sense, as defenders of quote unquote America,” he says.2022 April 13, Ryan Bort, “The Real Reason Republicans Are Loading Their 2022 Campaign Ads With Guns”, in Rolling Stone:
As a performer, [Sydney] Sweeney is best when she’s given a challenge. Asked to play a quote-unquote normal girl in, say, the rom-com “Anyone but You” (2023), one of her biggest box office triumphs to date, she falls flat.2025 December 21, Esther Zuckerman, “Is Sydney Sweeney Today’s Most Perplexing Movie Star?”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:
quote unquote
adv
Etymology From quote + unquote, a spoken equivalent of air quotes, used to express satire, sarcasm, irony or euphemism, analogous to scare quotes in print.
1
Used in spoken language to delimit a quotation in the same function as quotation marks.
Adam Smith claimed that a capitalist is, quote, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention, unquote.
So you quote love unquote me / Well, stranger things have come to be2004, “I Don't Believe You”, performed by The Magnetic Fields: