son of a bitch

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]

词汇	son of a bitch
词源	son of a bitch 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] Entries linking to son of a bitch bigot n. 1590s, "sanctimonious person, religious hypocrite," from French bigot (12c.), which is of unknown origin. The sense was extended 1680s to other than religious opinions. The earliest French use of the word is as the name of a people apparently in southern Gaul, which led to the theory, now considered doubtful on phonetic grounds, that the word comes from Visigothus. The typical use in Old French seems to have been as a derogatory nickname for Normans, leading to another theory (not universally accepted) that traces it to the Normans' (alleged) frequent use of the Germanic oath bi God. OED dismisses in a three-exclamation-mark fury one fanciful version of the "by god" theory as "absurdly incongruous with facts." At the end, not much is left standing except Spanish bigote "mustache," which also has been proposed as the origin of the word, but not explained, so the chief virtue of that theory is the lack of evidence against it. In support of the "by God" theory the surnames Bigott, Bygott are attested in Normandy and in England from the 11c., and French name-etymology sources (such as Dauzat) explain it as a derogatory name applied by the French to the Normans and representing "by god." The English were known as goddamns 200 years later in Joan of Arc's France, and during World War I Americans serving in France were said to be known as les sommobiches (see son of a bitch) for their characteristic oaths. But the sense development in bigot would be difficult to explain. According to Donkin, the modern meaning first appears in French in 16c. This and the earliest English sense, "religious hypocrite," especially a female one, might have been influenced by or confused with beguine (q.v.) and the words that cluster around it. S.O.B. abbreviation of son of a bitch (q.v.). The existence of sob (n.) probably prevented it becoming a full acronym. updated on March 12, 2023
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son of a bitch

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