A: You look so beautiful today! I mistook you for a film star at first.

B: Cut out the banana oil! Flattery will get you nowhere!

A: Come on, I’m just telling the truth.

Note: Banana oil is a nontechnical name for pentyl acetate, which has the characteristic sweet odor of bananas and is used chiefly as a paint solvent and in artificial fruit flavors. In slang the term means “insincere talk, nonsense.” The precise analogy in this idiom is not clear. Possibly it is a variation on “snake oil,” a term for quack medicine that was extended to mean nonsense. This usage first appeared in the 1920s.