sell someone a bill of goods

Example: “The dealership sold us a bill of goods about the car's history.”

Origin: "Bill of goods" started out as a completely neutral, literal commercial term — simply an itemized list or shipment of merchandise, with no hint of dishonesty attached. The idiom's now-standard negative meaning developed in the early 1900s from a specific, everyday commercial risk: a buyer who agreed to purchase based only on a written bill describing goods not yet seen in person had no way to verify the description was accurate before paying, leaving real room for a dishonest seller to misrepresent what was actually being shipped. An early clear example of the fully idiomatic, figurative use appears in a 1933 Atchison Daily Globe article, by which point "sold a bill of goods" already meant exactly what it does now: deceived by empty promises or a knowingly false description.