son of a gun

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.{{cite web| title=Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary entry | url=http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=75741&dict=CALD | access-date=2006-06-02 }}{{cite web | title=Webster's Dictionary entry | url=http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=son+of+a+gun | access-date=2006-06-02 }} Encarta Dictionary defines the term in a different way as someone "affectionately or kindly regarded."{{cite encyclopedia | title=Encarta Dictionary entry | url=http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryResults.aspx?refid=1861710372 | access-date=2006-06-02 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071111045334/http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryResults.aspx?refid=1861710372 | archive-date=2007-11-11 }} The term can also be used as an interjection expressing surprise, mild annoyance or disappointment.

{{unreliable sources|date=May 2015}}

The phrase is found in a piece of comic verse from 1726:{{cite book

|year=1726

|author=[Anonymous]

|title=The British Apollo

|url=https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015030845070?urlappend=%3Bseq=47

|volume=2

|edition=third

|publisher=Theodore Sanders

|location=[London]

|page=379

|hdl=2027/mdp.39015030845070?urlappend=%3Bseq=47

}} {{quote|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".{{cite journal |page=39 |url=https://archive.org/details/gentlemansmagaz366unkngoog/page/n48 |last=Row |first=T. |title=[Various Etymologies] |journal=The Gentleman's Magazine |date=January 1787 |volume=lvii |issue=1 |location=London }}

File:Batterie inférieure - Victory.jpg (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.{{cite book | last =Kemp|first=Peter| title =The British Sailor: a social history of the lower deck | year =1970 | page =196 | publisher =J.M. Dent & Sons | location = London| isbn =978-0-460-03957-4}} 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."{{cite book | last =Smyth|first=W.H.| title =The Sailor's Word-Book: The Classic Dictionary of Nautical Terms | year =2005 | publisher =Conway Maritime | location = London| isbn =978-0-85177-972-0}}

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.{{cite book |title =The Military Revolution and Political Change: Origins of Democracy and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe | first =Brian | last =Downing | year =1992 | publisher =Princeton University Press | page =xi | isbn =978-0-691-07886-1}} 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 Legrand G. Capers; some people who read the weekly failed to realize that the story was a joke and reported it as true.{{cite web | url = https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pregnant-civil-war-bullet/ | title = Did a Woman Become Pregnant from a Civil War Bullet? |first=David |last=Mikkelson |date=March 7, 2000 | work = Snopes| access-date = July 21, 2005 }} This myth was the subject of an episode of the television show MythBusters, in which experiments showed the story implausible.{{cite web|title=MythBusters Results|url=https://mythresults.com/episode30|access-date=23 May 2024}}

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Category:Military slang and jargon

Category:Slang