Son of a gun

Son of a gun is an exclamation in American and British English. It can be used encouragingly or to compliment, as in "You son of a gun, you did it!"

For other uses, see Son of a gun (disambiguation).

Definition

The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary and Webster's Dictionary both define "son of a gun" in American English as a euphemism for son of a bitch.[1][2] Encarta Dictionary defines the term in a different way as someone "affectionately or kindly regarded."[3] The term can also be used as an interjection expressing surprise, mild annoyance or disappointment.[2][3]

Etymology

The phrase is found in a piece of comic verse from 1726:[4]

You Apollo's son,
You're a son of a gun,
Made up with bamboozle,
You directly I'll puzzle;

A 1787 correspondent to The Gentleman's Magazine suggested that the phrase originally meant "a soldier's brat".[5]

A 19th-century gun deck (HMS Victory).

The phrase potentially has its origin in a Royal Navy direction that pregnant women aboard smaller naval vessels give birth in the space between the broadside guns, in order to keep the gangways and crew decks clear.[6] Admiral William Henry Smyth wrote in his 1867 book, The Sailor's Word-Book: "Son of a gun, an epithet conveying contempt in a slight degree, and originally applied to boys born afloat, when women were permitted to accompany their husbands to sea; one admiral declared he literally was thus cradled, under the breast of a gun-carriage."[7]

Alternatively, historian Brian Downing proposes that the phrase "son of a gun" originated from feudal knights' disdain for newly developed firearms and those who wielded them.[8] An American urban myth also proposes that the saying originated in a story reported in the October 7, 1864 The American Medical Weekly about a woman impregnated by a bullet that went through a soldier's testicles and into her womb. The story about the woman was a joke written by Dr. Legrand G. Capers; some people who read the weekly failed to realize that the story was a joke and reported it as true.[9] This myth was the subject of an episode of the television show MythBusters, in which experiments showed the story implausible.[10]

References
  1. "Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary entry". Retrieved 2006-06-02.
  2. "Webster's Dictionary entry". Retrieved 2006-06-02.
  3. Encarta Dictionary entry. Archived from the original on 2007-11-11. Retrieved 2006-06-02.
  4. [Anonymous] (1726). The British Apollo. 2 (third ed.). [London]: Theodore Sanders. p. 379. hdl:2027/mdp.39015030845070.
  5. Row, T. (January 1787). "[Various Etymologies]". The Gentleman's Magazine. London. lvii (1): 39.
  6. Kemp, Peter (1970). The British Sailor: a social history of the lower deck. London: J.M. Dent & Sons. p. 196. ISBN 978-0-460-03957-4.
  7. Smyth, W.H. (2005). The Sailor's Word-Book: The Classic Dictionary of Nautical Terms. London: Conway Maritime. ISBN 978-0-85177-972-0.
  8. Downing, Brian (1992). The Military Revolution and Political Change: Origins of Democracy and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe. Princeton University Press. p. xi. ISBN 978-0-691-07886-1.
  9. "Bullet Pregnancy". Snopes. Retrieved July 21, 2005.
  10. "MythBusters Results". Retrieved 4 October 2013.
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