son
pronunciation
How to pronounce son in British English:
UK [sʌn]
How to pronounce son in American English:
US [sʌn]
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- Noun:
- a male human offspring
Word Origin
- son
- son: [OE] Son is an ancient word, with relatives in several Indo-European languages: Russian, Polish, and Czech syn, for instance, Sanskrit sūnús, and Greek huiús. These point back to an ancestral *sunu- or *sunyu-. This may have been related to Sanskrit sú- ‘bear, carry’, in which case its original meaning would have been ‘birth’, which evolved via ‘offspring’ to ‘son’. The prehistoric Germanic descendant of *sunuwas *sunuz, which has diversified into German sohn, Dutch zoon, Danish søn, and English and Swedish son.
- son (n.)
- Old English sunu "son, descendant," from Proto-Germanic *sunuz (cognates: 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(e)-nu- "son" (cognates: Sanskrit sunus, Greek huios, Avestan hunush, Armenian ustr, Lithuanian sunus, Old Church Slavonic synu, Russian and Polish syn "son"), a derived noun from root *seue- (1) "to give birth" (cognates: Sanskrit sauti "gives birth," Old Irish suth "birth, offspring"). 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 ...."
Antonym
Example
- 1. Their son was born last month .
- 2. Rajiv and sonia had a son and a daughter .
- 3. The four-year-old son smiled and went back to work .
- 4. The couple have a son and a daughter together .
- 5. As for ms ishiguro 's son ?