Fun with Idioms: Son of a Gun

The phrase "son of a gun" has evolved as a descriptive way to say that someone has done something unexpected. Usually it is used for negative behavior, but in some cases it can be used as a sort of endearment. Many people believe that "son of a gun" is a cleaned up version of "son of a bitch," but the etymology shows that it is the other way around.

When the phrase was first used, it referred to children with questionable pedigrees. Old English military ships usually did not allow their sailors to go ashore when they stopped at a port during a voyage. The military would allow the wives of the sailors to come aboard and spend some time with the men, however. Since the ships had very little space, the men and women would sling hammocks between the guns on deck. Any child that was conceived beneath the guns was known as a "son of a gun" since there was no way to confirm that the couple were actually married, which meant that there was no way to prove which sailor was the real father of the child. A son of a gun was a bastard child conceived between the guns on the deck of a military sailing ship. A couple of centuries ago this term was an insufferable insult.

The modern phrase "son of a bitch" bears a closer meaning to the original insult of the phrase "son of a gun," though "son of a bitch" developed long after "son of a gun" had become part of common speech. Today, "son of a gun" is not used in an insulting manner very often since the more powerful "son of a bitch" is available for use.