Meanings
- Very quickly; quicker than one expects.
You have to be careful in that area. They'll have your wallet before you can say Jack Robinson.
3 more examples
To men so generally enlightened as our colonial masters are, we should rather feel ourselves indebted for a rebuke than presume to offer one; and yet a vessel vanishes; she's out of sight before you can say Jack Robinson; and the master prefers travelling with such of his crew as have abstained from joining the marauders, three or four hundred miles a foot, because he has no other mode of travelling, with the express design of telling his employer that he is completely ruined.
1819 March 27, The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, page 3, column 2And if you see a sign of anyone being about the place, — living, or dead, or anyhow — you give me a yell. I shall be on the lookout, and I’ll be with you before you can say Jack Robinson.’
1897, Richard Marsh, The BeetleFather is seated inside the carriage before you can say Jack Robinson.
2002, Michel Faber, The Crimson Petal and the White, Canongate Books (2010), page 772Synonyms: before you can say knife, before you can say Jack Robertson, in the twinkling of an eye, in two shakes of a lamb's tail, quick as a flash, quick as a fox, quick as lightning
Synonyms & antonyms
phraseVery quickly; quicker than one expects.
Origin
Uncertain. There is some speculation that this is a reference to Sir John Robinson, the Lieutenant of the Tower of London from 1660 to 1680 and Lord Mayor of London in 1662, but there is nothing known about him that is associated with speed (Samuel Pepys called him as “a talking bragging bufflehead.”), and the phrase does not appear in print until 1778.
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Catalan en un dir Jesús
- en un dir Jesúsvery quickly
Finnish ennen kuin ehdit kissaa sanoa
- ennen kuin ehdit kissaa sanoavery quickly
Cite this entry
before you can say Jack Robinson. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/before%20you%20can%20say%20Jack%20Robinson
“before you can say Jack Robinson.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/before%20you%20can%20say%20Jack%20Robinson. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “before you can say Jack Robinson,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/before%20you%20can%20say%20Jack%20Robinson.
Source: before you can say Jack Robinson on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.