The Art of PowerPoint
Bob’s Your Uncle!
[Q] From Florence C Goold: “What is the origin and actual meaning of bob’s your uncle?â€
[A] This is a catchphrase which seemed to arise out of nowhere and yet has had a long period of fashion and is still going strong. It’s known mainly in Britain and Commonwealth countries, and is really a kind of interjection. It’s used to show how simple it is to do something: “You put the plug in here, press that switch, and Bob’s your uncle!â€.
from World Wide Words
I am officially starting a movement for the United States to join the rest of the civilized English speaking world and start shouting, “Bob’s Your Uncle!” This is a nice blog by Michael Quinion about English in England and the U.S., and he offers a detailed explanation of the phrase. Another related blog, “Separated by a Common Language” by a writer known only as “lynneguist” has an interesting post about Barack Obama’s apparently ambiguous racial standing.
It seems Debra J. Dickerson has claimed (in Salon) that Obama isn’t black because he isn’t a descendant of U.S. slaves. In rebuttal, Gary Kamiya writes (in Salon) that Obama “is black — he just isn’t “black.”” That settles it for me. Of course, lynnequist’s site is named after George Bernard Shaw’s famous quip that “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” He also said that “Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.” Bob’s your Uncle!
Office of Public Humiliation: Division of the (Kinder and Gentler) Grammar Police
“English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment, and education — Sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.”
– E. B. White“The greater part of the world’s troubles are due to questions of grammar.”
– Michel de Montaignefrom ETNI’s “Grammar Quotes“
How do we control grammar? We have to have some rules, right? Otherwise, no one would understand each other. Maybe. English is a mongrel mutt of a language, full of all sorts of odd imports and add ons and historical oddities. It’s no wonder we get it wrong so often. Have you ever wondered why nothing rhymes with orange or pajama?
One explanation is that they are both words adapted from non-European languages. Orange, according to FreeDictionary.com, “is possibly ultimately from Dravidian, a family of languages spoken in southern India and northern Sri Lank.” [http://www.tfd.com/orange]. Pajama, is from the Persian word for pants [http://www.tfd.com/pajama]
Three Famous Commas
- THE FATAL COMMA
Czarina Maria Fyodorovna once saved the life of a man by transposing a single comma in a warrant signed by her husband, Alexander III, which exiled a criminal to imprisonment and death in Siberia. On the bottom of the warrant the czar had written: `Pardon impossible, to be sent to Siberia.’ The czarina changed the punctuation so that her husband’s instructions read: `Pardon, impossible to be sent to Siberia.’ The man was set free. - THE BLASPHEMOUS COMMA
In several editions of the King James Bible, Luke 23:32 is changed entirely by the absence of a comma. In the passage that describes the other men crucified with Christ, the erroneous editions read: `And there were also two other malefactors.’ Instead of counting Christ as a malefactor, the passage should read: `And there were also two other, malefactors.’ - THE MILLION-DOLLAR COMMA
The US government lost at least a million dollars through the slip of a comma. In the tariff act passed on June 6, 1872, a list of duty-free items included: `Fruit plants, tropical and semitropical’. A government clerk accidentally altered the line to read: `Fruit, plants tropical and semitropical’. Importers successfully contended that the passage, as written, exempted all tropical and semitropical plants from duty fees. This cost the US a fortune until May 9, 1874, when the passage was amended to plug the hole.
I always think these sorts of grammatical stories are apocryphal, but these seem to me to be persuasive examples. They are taken from a Canongate Books website for The Book of Lists by By David Wallechinsky & Amy Wallace. Their other lists include 13 Sayings of Woody Allen, 17 Pairs of Contradictory Proverbs, 23 Obscure and Obsolete Words, and 33 Names of Things You Never Knew had Names.