“male child in relation to either or both parents,” Old English sunu “son, male child,” also broadly “male descendant;” also “second person of the Trinity,” from Proto-Germanic *sunus (source also of Old Saxon and Old Frisian sunu, Old Norse sonr, Danish søn, Swedish son, Middle Dutch sone, Dutch zoon, Old High German sunu, German Sohn, Gothic sunus “son“).
The Germanic words are from PIE *su(H)nus “son” (source also of Sanskrit sunus, Greek huios, Avestan hunush, Armenian ustr, Lithuanian sūnus, Old Church Slavonic synu, Russian and Polish syn “son”), a derived noun from root *su(H)- “to give birth” (source also of Sanskrit sauti “gives birth,” Old Irish suth “birth, offspring”).
The sense of “person whose character partakes so much of some quality as to suggest the relation of a son to a parent” was in Old English. As “person regarded as the product of some place,” 1590s.
Son of _____ as the title of a sequel to a book or movie is recorded from 1917 (“Son of Tarzan”). Most explanations for son of a gun (1708) are more than a century after its appearance. Henley (1903) describes it as meaning originally “a soldier’s bastard;” Smyth’s “Sailor’s Word-Book” (1867) describes it as “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 ….”
“husband of one’s daughter,” mid-14c., sone-in-lai, sone-in-laue, from son + in-law. An earlier Middle English word was mog (mid-13c.), from Old Norse mogr “male in-law.” Also othom, from Old English aðum “son– or brother-in-law.”
1707 as a direct phrase, but implied much earlier, and Old Norse had bikkju-sonr. Abbreviated form SOB from 1918; the form sumbitch attested in writing by 1969.
Abide þou þef malicious!
Biche-sone þou drawest amis
þou schalt abigge it ywis!
[“Of Arthour & of Merlin,” c. 1330]
“Probably the most common American vulgarity from about the middle of the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth” [Rawson].
Our maid-of-all-work in that department [indecency] is son-of-a-bitch, which seems as pale and ineffectual to a Slav or a Latin as fudge does to us. There is simply no lift in it, no shock, no sis-boom-ah. The dumbest policeman in Palermo thinks of a dozen better ones between breakfast and the noon whistle. [H.L. Mencken, “The American Language,” 4th ed., 1936, p.317-8]
Elsewhere, complaining of the tepidity of the American vocabulary of profanity, Mencken writes that the toned-down form son-of-a-gun “is so lacking in punch that the Italians among us have borrowed it as a satirical name for an American: la sanemagogna is what they call him, and by it they indicate their contempt for his backwardness in the art that is one of their great glories.”
It was in 1934 also that the New York Daily News, with commendable frankness, in reporting a hearing in Washington at which Senator Huey P. Long featured, forsook the old-time dashes and abbreviations and printed the complete epithet “son of a bitch.” [Stanley Walker, “City Editor,” 1934]
“without a son, having no son,” late 14c., soneles, from son + -less.
also step-son, “son from a spouse’s previous marriage,” Middle English stepsone, from Late Old English steopsunu; see step- + son.
common conjoined prefix in Scottish and Irish names, from Old Celtic *makko-s “son.” Cognate *makwos “son” produced Old Welsh map, Welsh mab, ap “son;” also probably cognate with Old English mago “son, attendant, servant,” Old Norse mögr “son,” Gothic magus “boy, servant,” Old English mægð “maid” (see maiden).
Formerly often abbreviated to M’ and followed by a capital letter, or spelled out Mac and then rarely used with a capital; as, M’Donald, Macdonald, McDonald.
1520s, “process of becoming, or state of being, a son,” from French filiation, from Medieval Latin filiationem (nominative filiatio), noun of action from past-participle stem of filiare “to have a child,” from Latin filius/filia “son/daughter” (see filial). As “relationship of a son or daughter to a parent” (correlative of paternity) from 1794.
mid-14c., gunne “an engine of war that throws rocks, arrows or other missiles from a tube by the force of explosive powder or other substance,” apparently a shortening of woman’s name Gunilda, found in Middle English gonnilde “cannon” and in an Anglo-Latin reference to a specific gun from a 1330 munitions inventory of Windsor Castle (“… una magna balista de cornu quae Domina Gunilda …”). Also compare gonnilde gnoste “spark or flame used to fire a cannon” (early 14c.).
The woman’s name is from Old Norse Gunnhildr, a compound of gunnr and hildr, both meaning “war, battle.” First element from PIE *gwhen- “to strike, kill” (see bane); for second, see Hilda.
The identification of women with powerful weapons is common historically (such as Big Bertha, Brown Bess, Mons Meg, etc.).
Or perhaps gun is directly from Old Norse gunnr “battle.” The word was perhaps influenced by or confirmed by (or possibly from) Old French engon, dialectal variant of engin “engine.”
Meaning grew with technology, from cannons to firearms as they developed 15c.; popularly applied to pistols and revolvers from 1744. In modern military use the word is restricted to cannons (which must be mounted), especially long ones used for high velocity and long trajectory. Hence great guns (1884 as an exclamation) distinguished from small guns (such as muskets) from c. 1400. Meaning “thief, rascal” is from 1858. For son of a gun, see son. To jump the gun (1912, American English) is a figurative use from track and field. Guns “a woman’s breasts” (especially if prominent) attested by 2006.
[G]un covers firearms from the heaviest naval or siege guns (but in technical use excluding mortars and howitzers) to the soldier’s rifle or the sportsman’s shotgun, and in current U.S. use even the gangster’s revolver. In the other European languages there is no such comprehensive word, but different terms for the small or hand gun of the soldier or sportsman (even these, sometimes differentiated) and the heavy naval guns or artillery pieces …. [Buck, 1949]
“small boy,” 1833, from son + -y (3). As a familiar form of address to one younger or inferior, by 1852. The song “Sonny Boy” (Jolson) was popular in 1928.
Source: O
etymonline.com
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