Etymologically
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son

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Pronunciation

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

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)