I say it's spinach
More actions
"I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it" is the caption of a 1928 gag cartoon published in The New Yorker, drawn by Carl Rose with a caption written by E. B. White. The line passed into general English usage as a stand-alone idiom.
The cartoon
The drawing shows a mother at the dinner table trying to coax her young daughter into eating a vegetable. "It's broccoli, dear," the mother says. The daughter answers, "I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it." The joke turns on the daughter's blunt refusal to be talked into liking something just because it has been given a more appealing name.
Legacy
The caption quickly outgrew the cartoon itself, becoming a common idiom used to dismiss a claim or a relabeling of something unwanted, roughly equivalent to "call it whatever you like, I'm not buying it." It is frequently cited as one of the most famous single captions in the history of American gag cartooning, and the cartoon itself is regularly reproduced in anthologies and histories of The New Yorker.