son [OE] An Old English word, which goes back to an Indo-European root with the idea of ‘birth’. When we call someone a son of a gun [18th] we are using a term that may come from naval history. The phrase is supposed to have been applied to babies born at sea to women allowed to accompany their husbands. If the father was not known, the child was described in the ship’s log as a ‘son of a gun’.