"Bob's your uncle!"

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:13 PM +0200 10/11/01, Jan Ivarsson TransEdit wrote:
>Nigel Rees' Dictionary of Phrase & Allusion (Bloomsbury 1991, 1993)
>says this about "Bob":
>"This is an almost meaningless expression of the type that takes
>hold from time to time, as another way of saying 'there you are;
>there you have it; simple as that'. It was current by the 1880s but
>doesn't appear to be of any hard and fast origin. It is basically a
>British expression - and somewhat baffling to Americans. There is
>the story of one such who went into a London shop, had it said to
>him, and exclaimed: 'But how did you know - I do have an uncle
>Bob!?' In 1886, Arthur Balfour was appointed Chief Secretary for
>Ireland by his uncle, _Robert_ Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd
>Marquis of Salisbury, the Prime Minister. Could this be a possible
>source?"
>
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1870/1970) has a slightly
different gloss ('that will be all right; you needn't bother any
more') and concurs that it was 'in use in the 1880s but of unknown
origin')

larry