son

Pronunciation

• IPA: /sʌn/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English sone, inherited from Old English sunu,^[2][3][4] from Proto-Germanic *sunuz,^[3][5] from Proto-Indo-European *su(H)nus (“son”), derived from *su(H)- (“to give birth”).^[2][4] Its relatives include German Sohn, Dutch zoon and Old Norse sonr, and outside Germanic Lithuanian sūnus and Ancient Greek υἱός (huiós, “son”).^[3][2][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

A male child; also a male descendant, and the second person of the Trinity: Old English sunu, about 725, in Beowulf.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

The figurative sense, a person sharing some quality as if its son, was already Old English.^[2] The form sone is found probably before 1150,^[3] and son-in-law before 1325, in the Cursor Mundi.^[3] A man regarded as a product of some place is a son from the 1590s.^[2] Son of a gun is from 1708.^[2] Smyth's Sailor's Word-Book (1867) explains it as a mildly contemptuous term first used of boys born at sea,^[2][7] though Etymonline notes that most explanations come more than a century after the phrase.^[2] Son of as the title of a sequel, as in Son of Tarzan, is from 1917.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 725 – Old English sunu (Beowulf).^[3]
• before 1150 – sone.^[3]
• before 1325 – son-in-law.^[3]
• 1590s – a man from a given place.^[2]
• 1708 – son of a gun.^[2]
• 1917 – Son of for a sequel.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A male child in relation to his parents.
2. A male descendant.
3. A man thought of as the product of a place or influence: a son of the soil.
4. Used as a familiar form of address to a young man.
5. (capitalized) The second person of the Trinity.

Word family

• sonly
• sonhood
• sonless
• sonlike
• sonship
• godson
• grandson
• son-in-law

Related words

• daughter
• sonny

Usage notes

A separate word son, a slow Cuban dance and song, is from Spanish son, “sound”, recorded in English from the 20th century.^[8][9][10]

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
5. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)