Thread: Jack Robinson

Here's the sentence I recently read in Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind":
"He was out of the office before you could say Jack Robinson".
The second part seems to be a kind of proverb. Well the meaning of this is actually clear, for it's easy to figure out of the passage. The question is where does it come from. I wonder if anyone knows true origin. I wonder if Jack Robinson sounds really that fast. I think there is a huge number of words in English that are short enough to describe the gap of time being extremely small. Then why it is still proposed saying this way? And who's that Jack Robinson after all?

I havn't heard that name used before.

I recognise the expression, but I'm not sure from where (Gone with the Wind, p'raps )

I'd guess that he was probably a once-well-known but now long-forgotten public figure from the dim and distant past, possibly a politician. English is littered with odd references like this (Gordon Bennet!).

before you can say Jack Robinson

Also, quicker than you can say Jack Robinson. Almost immediately, very soon, as in I'll finish this book before you can say Jack Robinson. This expression originated in the 1700s, but the identity of Jack Robinson has been lost. Grose's Classical Dictionary (1785) said he was a man who paid such brief visits to acquaintances that there was scarcely time to announce his arrival before he had departed, but it gives no further documentation. A newer version is before you know it, meaning so soon that you don't have time to become aware of it (as in He'll be gone before you know it).

From dictionary.com

I don't know who Jack Robbinson is or was but I am quite familiar with the expression as it was used often where I grew up. But now you have me curious. I will have to do a search.

Yep we used to have that when I was a kid too.

On the subject of Jack Robinson
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_boar ... s/924.html
that is all I could find.

What you guys told me is just what I wanted to know. My curiosity has been completely satisfied with that. The expression seems to be of rare use in present, almost forgotten one, right?

Probably not so rare among the older generation but anyone growing up on a diet American television and MTV has probably not heard it.