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It’s where your bigger cousin is giving you a noogie and you want his dad to help.

• moron4hire 5y ago
  I always understood the usage of "to cry uncle", but never understood the origin until you described it this way. I guess, being the oldest cousin in my family, and not being the kind of person to beat up my younger cousins, it never came up.
  • boomboomsubban 5y ago
    I don't think that's the actual origin, Wikipedia says it likely comes from a 19th century joke about a parrot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say_Uncle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say_Uncle
    • Y_Y 5y ago
      from the Iowa Citizen of 9 October 1891: > A gentleman was boasting that his parrot would repeat anything he told him. For example, he told him several times, before some friends, to say “Uncle,” but the parrot would not repeat it. In anger he seized the bird, and half-twisting his neck, said: “Say ‘uncle,’ you beggar!” and threw him into the fowl pen, in which he had ten prize fowls. Shortly afterward, thinking he had killed the parrot, he went to the pen. To his surprise he found nine of the fowls dead on the floor with their necks wrung, and the parrot standing on the tenth twisting his neck and screaming: “Say ‘uncle,’ you beggar! say uncle.’”