Say "uncle"? Why not "aunt"? Or "cousin"? Or "awopbopalopawopbamboom"?

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

I just noticed a thread of which the title used the word “uncle” in the sense of “I surrender”.

How did that usage come to be? It makes no sense. Why “uncle”?

[Atticus_Finch]

This is more of a GQ. The OED shows it first appearing in 1918, and one of the usages below has a possible derivation from Old Irish.

4. to cry (holler, say, etc.) uncle, to acknowledge defeat, to cry for mercy. N. Amer. colloq.

1918 Chicago Herald-Examiner 1 Oct. 11 Sic him Jenny Jinxmake him say ‘Uncle’. 1939 Amer. Speech XIV. 267 ‘He hollered “calf rope” or ‘He hollered “uncle”,’ are publishments of his defeat. 1941 B. SCHULBERG What makes Sammy Run? vi. 139 Kit was the one who did him some good. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll cry uncle.’ 1962 W. STEGNER Wolf Willow III. iii. 237 With good hay land and good range [we can] make this God darned country holler uncle. 1972 D. DELMAN Sudden Death v. 122 ‘Stop it, darling, please.’ ‘Say uncle.’ ‘Uncle.’ 1980 Amer. Speech 1976 LI. 281 Most American schoolboys are…familiar with the expression cry uncle or holler uncle, meaning ‘give up in a fight, ask for mercy’. Uncle in this expression is surely a folk etymology, and the Irish original of the word is anacol (anacal, anacul) ‘act of protecting; deliverance; mercy, quarter, safety’, a verbal noun from the Old Irish verb aingid ‘protects’… My unscientific sampling of English speakers in Britain a few years ago indicated that cry uncle is not familiar in England or Scotland.

[MEBuckner]

Moderator’s Note: Moving from Great Debates to General Questions.