Origin of Bob's your uncle?
The phrase 'Bob's your uncle' is commonly used in British English and Commonwealth variants. It is a flexible idiom that loosely means 'and there you have it.'
The origin is commonly thought to be the appointment of Arthur Balfour as Chief Secretary of Ireland by then Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil (Lord Salisbury) in 1887.
Balfour was Lord Salisbury's nephew, who was popularly known as Bob, a short form of Robert.
No formal citations appear in print until the 1930s, but evidence suggests the phrase was in use before then. The poster for this review comes from 1924.
