son of a gun

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Son of a gun is an exclamation or a noun in American and British English. Apollo 12 Astronaut Pete Conrad said, upon seeing the Surveyor 3 just prior to touching down on the Moon: "Hey, there it is! There it is! Son of a gun, right down the middle of the road!" It can be used encouragingly or to compliment, as in "You son of a gun, you did it!"

Origins

British English

It is claimed that in British naval slang this term refers to a child of questionable parentage conceived on the gun deck, hence 'son of a gun'. However, the term possibly predates this claimed origin, and Snopes.com lists it as being part of the English lexicon since at least 1708.^[1], although British warships, such as the Mary Rose, had carried gun decks since at least the times of Henry VIII in the Sixteenth Century. It is sometimes claimed that the saying has its origin in the supposed practice of women travelling on board ship and giving birth on a sectioned off portion of the gun deck. For instance, Admiral William Henry Smyth wrote in his 1867 book, The Sailor's Word-Book:^[2] 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.

American English

In American folks idiom (American), this term has similars meaning to the British one, but was derived from military bureaucratic treatment of young enlisted men of uncertain familial background. If a recruit was unable to state his father's name, officers recorded "A. Gun".^{[citation needed]}.

An urban legend sometimes states that 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 scrotum and into her abdomen was the origin of the term "son of a gun." 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.^[3]

Others

Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary and Webster's Dictionary both define 'son of a gun' term in American English as a euphemism for son of a bitch.^[4][5]

Historian Brian Dowding states that the phrase 'son of a gun' originates from feudal knights' disdain for newly developed firearms.^[6]

Encarta Dictionary defines the term in a different way as someone "affectionately or kindly regarded."^[7]

The term can also be used as an interjection expressing surprise, mild annoyance or disappointment.^[5][7]

There is the "Famous Minie Ball Pregnancy". The sign at the Old Courthouse Museum, Vicksburg MS reads:

"During the battle of Raymond, Miss., in 1863, a minie ball reportedly passed through the reproductive organs of a young lady who was standing on the porch of her nearby home. The story was written 11 years later by Dr. LeGrand G. Capers of Vicksburg for the American Medical Weekly. Capers claimed that he treated the wounds, that the girl became pregnant from the fertile minie ball, that he delivered the baby, introduced the girl to the soldier, that the two were married and had two more children by the normal method!"

References

Look up son of a gun in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.