A disclaimer, often quite false. This expression, which basically means “I would not dream of doing/saying [something] when in truth I really would,” dates from the fourteenth century and has been a cliché for at least two hundred years. The earliest record is in John Wycliffe’s translation of Genesis (44:17): “Josephe answerede, Fer be it fro me, that Y thus do”; the King James Version has it “God forbid that I should do so.”