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You are here: Home / Language / Where does the expression “before one can say Jack Robinson” come from and What does it mean?

Where does the expression “before one can say Jack Robinson” come from and What does it mean?

June 24, 2020 by Karen Hill

The phrase “before one can say Jack Robinson” means in a couple of shakes, two shakes of a lamb’s tail, or, in plain English, immediately, with no loss of time.

The expression arose during the latter part of the eighteenth century and, as far as anyone has been able to discover, it was no more than a meaningless phrase.

No “Jack Robinson” nor “John Robinson” attained any prominence at that period.

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Filed Under: Language

About Karen Hill

Karen Hill is a freelance writer, editor, and columnist. Born in New York, her work has appeared in the Examiner, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, among others.

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