The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #123344 Message #2714882
Posted By: Amos
02-Sep-09 - 04:13 PM
Thread Name: BS: Is Bob Your Uncle?
Subject: RE: BS: Is Bob Your Uncle?
No, you did nothing wrong. THe phrase (I always thought) is Australian, and I have heard it from Aussie mates as long as I can remember. It means "there ya go!".
Wikipedia says: "It is a catchphrase sometimes claimed to date to 1887, when British Prime Minister Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury decided to appoint Arthur Balfour to the prestigious and sensitive post of Chief Secretary for Ireland. Lord Salisbury was Arthur Balfour's uncle. The difficulty with that proposed explanation is that there is no contemporary documentation for it, and, despite extensive searching, the earliest known published uses of the phrase are two from 1937 and two from 1938 (these and other quotations at American Dialect Society list archived posts by Stephen Goranson).
[edit] Usage
In some places in Britain, "Bob's your uncle" is also a way of saying "you're all set", "you've got it made!" or "that's great!" and is used as an expression of jubilation at good fortune. It is used thus in the Alastair Sim film Scrooge, a version of the classic Dickens story A Christmas Carol, where a reformed Ebenezer Scrooge confronts his housekeeper, Mrs Dilber, on Christmas morning. He gives her a guinea (£1.05 in that era, and equivalent to about $100 today) as a Christmas present, and announces he will significantly raise her salary. In a burst of excitement the housekeeper responds, "Bob's yer uncle! Merry Christmas, Mr Scrooge, in keeping with the situation!"[1]. However, this may be an anachronism, as A Christmas Carol was first published by Dickens in 1843 and as outlined above the expression (in the later film) was not in use at that time.
Usage has also evolved to the expressions "Robert's your father's brother", "Robert's your auntie's husband" and "Robert's your mother's brother" as synonymous phrases. "Fanny's your aunt" appears later."
The "Phrases.UK" site offers this: "Eric Partridge lists it in his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English , 1937. He gives it the meaning 'all will be well', which is not quite how it is used now. Partridge states it as dating from circa 1890, although he presents no evidence for that. Also he suggests that it may be derived from the phrase 'all is bob', which meant 'all is well'.
Another interpretation is that it derives from the supposed nepotism of Lord Salisbury. Piers Brendon, in Eminent Edwardians, 1979, writes:
"... in 1887, Balfour was unexpectedly promoted to the vital front line post of Chief Secretary for Ireland by his uncle Robert, Lord Salisbury."