son

[suhn] /sʌn/

noun

a male child or person in relation to his parents.

a male child or person adopted as a son; a person in the legal position of a son.

any male descendant:

a son of the Aztecs.

a son-in-law.

a person related as if by ties of sonship.

a male person looked upon as the product or result of particular agencies, forces, influences, etc.:

a true son of the soil.

a familiar term of address to a man or boy from an older person, an ecclesiastic, etc.

the Son, the second person of the Trinity; Jesus Christ.

Origin

before 900; Middle English sone, Old English sunu; cognate with Dutch zoon, German Sohn, Old Norse sunr, sonr, Gothic sunus, Lithuanian sūnùs, Sanskrit sūnus; akin to Greek huiós

Related forms

sonless, adjective

sonlike, adjective

son-

variant of soni- before a vowel:

sonance.

Examples from the web for son

He was the son of king henry viii by his third wife, jane seymour.
When jeroboam died, his son, nadab, took over as king of israel.
Yule took her son to the audition after applying burnt cork to his scalp.
They had two children, a son who died three weeks after his birth and a daughter.
She requests for one of the men to accompany her to reclaim her son.
Examples of this included the parable of the prodigal son and lost sheep.
In law, the rule of inheritance whereby land descends to the oldest son.
He is the son of a businessman whose home is at haywards heath in the stockbroker belt.
The consequence was that the relations between father and son became more strained.
He next equipped his son in the same manner, and taught him how to fly.

British Dictionary definitions for son

son

/sʌn/

noun

a male offspring; a boy or man in relation to his parents

a male descendant

(often capital) a familiar term of address for a boy or man

a male from a certain country, place, etc, or one closely connected with a certain environment: a son of the circus, a son of the manse

adjective filial

Derived Forms

sonless, adjective
sonlike, adjective

Word Origin

Old English sunu; related to Old Norse sunr, Gothic sunus, Old High German sunu, Lithuanian sūnus, Sanskrit sūnu

Son

/sʌn/

noun

(Christianity) the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ

Word Origin and History for son

Old English sunu "son, descendant," from Proto-Germanic *sunuz (cf. 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" (cf. 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" (cf. 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 1929 ("Son of Tarzan").

Idioms and Phrases with son

son

In addition to the idiom beginning with

son

also see: