Back in 1605, Shakespeare put out a play that is full of cursing and name-calling. It was called King Lear.
Lear’s protector, the Duke of Kent, takes a hard line with Goneril’s steward, Oswald, for the way he has treated Lear, and attacks him both physically and with this memorable tirade:
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats;
a proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave;
a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,
glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue;
one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a
bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but
the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar,
and the sonne and heir of a mungrell bitch: one whom I
will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest
the least syllable of thy addition.
It starts with the epithet ‘whoreson’.
It was ubiquitous in the 16th century, right along with sonne of a bastard and sonne of a buggerer.
Shakespeare probably plucked this idea from the vernacular being used around him – he basically wrote dick jokes for the masses and was very familiar with how ordinary people spoke.
Though he didn’t invent the phrase, he played a part in cementing it in modern English. In 1609 he uses it again in Troilus and Cressida: “thou bitchwolfs son, canst thou not heare?”
Let’s take a detour into ‘bastard’.
It comes to us Middle English from early 13th-century Old French bastard, “acknowledged child of a nobleman by a woman other than his wife” (Modern French bâtard). That was probably derived from fils de bast “packsaddle son,” meaning a child conceived on an improvised bed (since saddles often doubled as beds while traveling), with pejorative ending -art.
In German there was bänkling “child begotten on a bench” (and not in a marriage bed), which was the source of English bantling (1590s) “brat, small child.”
Bastard was not always regarded as a stigma; the Conqueror is referred to in state documents as “William the Bastard”. The figurative sense of “thing not pure or genuine” is by late 14th-century, and its use as a generic vulgar term of abuse for a man is attested from 1830.
Among the “bastard” words in Halliwell-Phillipps’ Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words are avetrol, chance-bairn, by-blow, harecoppe, horcop, and gimbo (“a bastard’s bastard”).
The word bastard is still used relatively neutrally in historical references and historical fiction, but is usually considered offensive when used in present-day contexts to describe a child born to parents not married to each other.
Today, son of a bitch is a multi-purpose phrase that I absolutely adore.
By being so commonly used and because of changing cultural standards, has lost its sting as isn’t as biting as it once was.
It’s often used vulgarly to be critical of someone for their actions and is typically used of men.
It can be used when speaking of someone, “That son of a bitch stole my car!”, directly aimed at someone, “Don’t talk to me, you son of a bitch!” and it can also used to express approval and admiration, “He’s a talented son of a bitch, isn’t he?”
You can also use it to express pity or sympathy, “That poor son of a bitch” and use it as an exclamation, such as when you’re working on something difficult and not making progress, “Son of a bitch!” (It also works when you stub your toe or step on a Lego.)
These Shakespearean expressions so often start with something literal, like the comparison with a real offspring of a dog – ‘the son and heir of a mongrel bitch’, and eventually become a general expression, used by millions of people in modern language, and won’t literally refer to its original reference.
I realise you didn’t wake up today thinking that you’d be treated to an essay on the origins of the phrase ‘son of a bitch’, but here we are.
I’m a copywriter which means I’m a total word nerd, and I’ll dive into the etymology of a word or phrase because I find it fascinating!
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