I'm picking up what you're putting down

The current fashionable phrase I’m picking up what you’re putting down has its roots in the expression from British underworld slang to put down meaning ‘to make something very clear’.

We start with a quote from our old friend James Hardy Vaux, the chronicler of convict slang.

Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang. in McLachlan (1964) 236: to put a person down to any thing, is to apprize him of; elucidate, or explain it to him; to put a swell down, signifies to alarm or put a gentleman on his guard, when in the attempt to pick his pocket, you fail to effect it at once, and by having touched him a little too roughly, you cause him to suspect your design, and to use precautions accordingly; or perhaps, in the act of sounding him, by being too precipitate or incautious, his suspicions may have been excited, and it is then said that you have put him down, put him fly, or spoiled him.

This bit of British underworld slang travelled to America where it resurfaced in Black American English as to put it down or lay it down. By the 1980s it was being used generally.  But more recently it has, in a bit of word play, produced the expression I’m picking up what you’re putting down meaning ‘I understand completely your point of view’.  A song with this title from a South African band Sugardrive, combined with a meme on the internet, and suddenly we are all picking up what others are putting down.   Occasionally you will find I’m picking up what you’re laying down but the alliteration of pick and put is irresistible.