don't know that I can tell you where this comes from, or how, but I can note that it's a bit archaic. It was an expression used by my grandparents and it puts me in mind of one of my grandfather's delightful, and now archaic, expressions, "to make [someone or something] out", meaning "to understand". Echoing every married man since Adam, at the culminating point of an argument with my grandmother, he would cry, "Jennie, I can't make you out!."

I like that expression--and use it (but never speaking with my wife when I can't understand her).
I also like "puts me in mind" which I saw in passing.