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A fanciful suggestion is that it may be based on a joke from 19th-century England about a bullied parrot being coaxed to address his owner's uncle. Another suggested origin is from the English phrase “time out”, a plea to cease hostilities. The abbreviated usage "T.O." was mistaken for the Spanish “tío”, which means "uncle".
While its exact origins are unclear, it is believed that the expression originated in North America during the early 20th century. Some historians suggest that the phrase may have been derived from an old British schoolyard game called “uncle,” which involved wrestling until one participant cried out for mercy by saying “uncle.”
Nov 28, 1998 · This call by one child for another to submit or cry for mercy — which appears variously as say uncle!, cry uncle! or holler uncle! — is first recorded in print in the US early in the twentieth century. The Oxford English Dictionary ’s first example is from 1918, but I’ve found an instance in an advertisement in the Modesto News of ...
Jan 25, 2001 · : Anyone know where the phrase 'Say Uncle' meaning 'I give up' came from? It seems that while "crying uncle" is today regarded as an Americanism, its origins go all the way back to the Roman Empire. Roman children, when beset by a bully, would be forced to say "Patrue, mi Patruissimo," or "Uncle, my best Uncle," in order to surrender and be freed.
The earliest known example of the phrase in print is in the bill for a performance of a musical revue in Dundee called Bob’s Your Uncle, which appeared in the Scottish newspaper The Angus Evening Telegraph in June 1924. Florrie Forde – who. recorded the song ‘Bob’s. your uncle’ in 1931.
TIL that when Miss Saigon premiered, the wedding song was all nonsense syllables, which were not replaced with real Vietnamese lyrics until twenty five years later
Aug 1, 2014 · The only facts we know for sure are that it’s strictly a North American phrase, and that it first appeared in written English in 1918. After that, opinions split on to how the custom developed ...
