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Son of a gun is an exclamation or a noun in American and British English. Apollo 12 Astronaut Pete Conrad said, upon seeing the Surveyor 3 just prior to touching down on the Moon: "Hey, there it is! There it is! Son of a gun, right down the [middle of the road]!". It can be used encouragingly or to compliment, as in "You son of a gun , you did it!"
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It is claimed that in British naval slang this term refers to a child of [questionable] parentage conceived on the gun deck, hence 'son of a gun'. However, the term possibly predates this claimed origin, and Snopes.com lists it as being part of the English lexicon since at least 1708.1 It is sometimes claimed that the saying has its origin in the supposed practice of women travelling on board ship and giving birth on a sectioned off portion of the gun deck. For instance, Admiral [William Henry] Smyth wrote in his 1867 book, The Sailor's Word-Book:2 Son of a gun, 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; one admiral declared he literally was thus cradled, under the breast of a gun-carriage.
edit [American English]

In American folk idiom (American), this term has similar meaning to the British one, but was derived from military bureaucratic treatment of [young] enlisted men of uncertain familial background. If a recruit was unable to state his father's name, officers recorded "A. Gun".citation needed

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