Monkey's uncle

The term monkey's uncle, most notably seen in the idiom "(well) I'll be a monkey's uncle", is used to express complete surprise, amazement or disbelief.[1] It can also be used to acknowledge the impossibility of a situation, in the same way that "pigs might fly" is used. An example is if one says: "I may agree that if two plus two equals five, then I am a monkey's uncle".

The phrase has been said to date from 1925, the year of the widely publicized Scopes Trial in the United States, where the term first appeared.[2] The earliest example quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary is: "If that's a joke I'm a monkey's uncle", from an Ohio newspaper on 8 February 1925.[3] It was originally a sarcastic remark made by creationists.[4] The notion "that [people] were descended from apes was considered blasphemous...by Darwin's contemporaries", and it was for this reason that the sarcastic phrase came into use.[5]

Michael Quinion notes that the phrase "Monkey's uncle" occurs in a parody of Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha which was reprinted in James Parton's The Humorous Poetry of the English Language, published in 1881, and observes: "This may be just an accident of invention, but the date fits".[6] The Monkey's Uncle is a 1965 Walt Disney movie, with the title song written by the Sherman Brothers and performed by Annette Funicello and the Beach Boys. On their 2003 album Reel to Real, The Selecter included a song titled "Monkey's Uncle", criticizing religious dogma that contradicts scientific evidence. I'm a Monkey's Uncle was a Three Stooges short film.