uncle [ME] Both uncle and avuncular [M19th] came through Old French from Latin avunculus ‘uncle on the mother’s side’. In the late 16th century people started misinterpreting an uncle as a nuncle, and uncle developed a parallel form, nuncle—the opposite of the process seen in *adder, *apron, and umpire (see pair). In Shakespeare’s King Lear the Fool addresses his employer Lear as ‘nuncle’. The expression Uncle Tom Cobley and all comes from an old song called ‘Widdicombe Fair’, dating from around 1800. The song lists the men’s names, ending with ‘Uncle Tom Cobley and all’. The independent use of the phrase itself did not develop the end of the century. Uncle Sam has personified the government or people of the USA since the early 19th century. The name is probably based on the initials US. There is a story that it refers to one Samuel Wilson, who supplied canned meat to the US army during the British–American War of 1812, but there is no evidence to support this; nevertheless, in 1961 Congress passed a resolution to honour him as the progenitor of the personification. Since the 1850s Uncle Tom has been an insulting and offensive name for a black man considered to be excessively obedient or servile to whites. The original ‘Uncle Tom’ was an elderly slave who was the central figure of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin.