not buy

not buy (something)

To not accept or believe something as the truth. My brother says that his latest scheme will make millions, but I'm not buying it. The teacher didn't buy my story about the dog eating my homework.
See also: buy, not
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

not buy something

Fig. not accept something (to be true). You may think so, but I don't buy it. The police wouldn't buy his story.
See also: buy, not
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • by no means
  • not by any means
  • not exactly
  • hope not
  • (I) hope not
  • not for a second
  • not for a minute
  • not for a moment
  • aint
  • ain't
References in classic literature
One can not buy and pay for two cents' worth of clams without trouble and a quarrel.
Yet all his millions could not buy him this one day.
"At the same time," declared the Tin Woodman, "you must acknowledge that a good heart is a thing that brains can not create, and that money can not buy. Perhaps, after all, it is I who am the richest man in all the world."
Those which did not please him failed commercially: he would not buy them, or sell them, or countenance them; and except through him, as "master of the industrial situation," nothing could be bought, or sold, or countenanced.
So it was that he entered abruptly upon a lean period, wherein he continued selling his earlier efforts to publications that would not pay and submitting his later work to magazines that would not buy. Also, he resumed his trips to the pawn-broker down in Oakland.
you seem so happy at your work.' 'Yes,' said the other, 'mine is a golden trade; a good grinder never puts his hand into his pocket without finding money in it--but where did you get that beautiful goose?' 'I did not buy it, I gave a pig for it.' 'And where did you get the pig?' 'I gave a cow for it.' 'And the cow?' 'I gave a horse for it.' 'And the horse?' 'I gave a lump of silver as big as my head for it.' 'And the silver?' 'Oh!
He had never been so poor that he could not buy canvas and paint, and really he needed nothing else.
Nor are the poets who write them to be blamed for this; for some there are among them who are perfectly well aware of their faults, and know what they ought to do; but as plays have become a salable commodity, they say, and with truth, that the actors will not buy them unless they are after this fashion; and so the poet tries to adapt himself to the requirements of the actor who is to pay him for his work.
If revolutionized Paris would not buy as the jour de l'an approached, Paris must have a new dynasty.
Even money could not buy them now; everything must come out, and everybody must know all.
We did not buy any wooden images of the Lion, nor any ivory or ebony or marble or chalk or sugar or chocolate ones, or even any photographic slanders of him.
Miserable women, whose faces never smile, haunt the butchers' shops in such London localities as these, with relics of the men's wages saved from the public-house clutched fast in their hands, with eyes that devour the meat they dare not buy, with eager fingers that touch it covetously, as the fingers of their richer sisters touch a precious stone.
Never has it been said that animal life may not buy animal life."
Are there painters in New York?" asked Beaufort, in a tone implying that there could be none since he did not buy their pictures; and Madame Olenska said to Archer, with her grave smile: "That would be charming.
If these countries do not buy oil from Iran, Iran will not buy their products either, he added.