Way with Words: Son of a Gun

‘Son of a gun,’ the classy alternative to ‘son of a bitch,’ dates back to the early days of marine warfare and is preferred in polite company to the latter, especially when kids are around or among those who can articulate themselves well without requiring a curse word.

The insult to the man is still regarding his mother, but ‘son of a gun’ has a lot more impact and social connotations than today’s language gives it credit for.

The British navy allowed wives of higher-ranking officers to come aboard the ship, and also brought on the occasional single lady for the men’s comforts, which inevitably resulted in a few pregnancies.

If the ship was not close enough to port to take a pregnant woman ashore, the part of the ship that rocked the least was used as the birthing station, and back then, this was the cargo hold with the cannons.

The wife or prostitute having the child would be made as comfortable as possible in between the guns, where she would give birth.

Any child born on board of uncertain paternity was referred to as a ‘son of a gun.’ The term did spread to mean the bastard child of any soldier, but more commonly you could interpret the phrase as ‘son of a naval whore.’

Now ships, like Aircraft Carriers, have hospitals or med bays, but no cannons, making this phrase’s actual origins near impossible to duplicate in the modern world.